Photo: https://community-driven.org/
No Child Goes Hungry (NCGH) is pleased to provide a $1,500 donation to Community Driven, a non-profit organization based in the St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minnesota area. The organization believes that all people deserve to have their basic needs met from education, housing, food, and long-term stability through public education and direct charitable support. The NCGH donation will support Community Driven’s flagship food-share program, which rescues large amounts of surplus food from local grocery stores and restaurants and delivers it to local food shelves and soup kitchens.
According to Christopher Allison, Community Driven Executive Director, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the organization’s primary funding source, a small, local, grassroots door-to-door entity. At the peak of the COVID-19 crisis, Community Driven staff rapidly mobilized to rescue food from restaurants closing down during the quarantine to get it to people in need. Allison reports that the need for hunger relief in the Twin Cities has been immense over the past several months.
“We have more than doubled the volume of food we are rescuing and distributing,” said Allison.
One of Community Driven’s highest volume partnerships is with Groveland Food Shelf in South Minneapolis, a community-based non-profit known for its dedicated food shelf program for children.
“Groveland Food Shelf is just a few blocks from South Minneapolis’ largest teen drop-in center,” explained Allison. “We partner with Groveland because of their work targeting and helping youth, as well as for their emergency food shelf model. It provides the easiest access to food for the homeless, immigrants, and minors, and it’s located in an area of Minneapolis that has also been greatly affected by the recent riots.”
Community Driven is also in the process of planning a mobile food share vehicle freezer. Adding refrigeration capabilities to its existing mobile food distribution program will enable the organization to distribute fresh and perishable foods to many community members.
“We are pleased to partner with No Child Goes Hungry,” said Allison. “We are grateful for their generosity and, hopefully, the start of a friendship where we can help each other and many people for a long time to come.”
Kären Rasmussen, NCGH Founder and Director said she applauds Community Driven’s innovation in the face of funding challenges and increased demand for services and support.
“The past several months have been tremendously challenging for organizations like Community Driven that are committed to hunger advocacy efforts,” said Rasmussen. “At the same time, those experiencing food insecurity are not feeling a reprieve either—just the opposite—as millions of Americans remain out of work and a large number of schools are seeing children in-person only part-time. I am pleased to support Community Driven’s ongoing efforts to support those in need in their community.”
To learn how NCGH can help support your local hunger advocacy initiative, contact us today.