Ventura Foods’ Post

A year from today, we were asked: “What will it take to create a more accessible, equitable, and complete food security system?” • We laid a foundation to this question and part of our solution is- solving food apartheid by recreating our own food system in East Knoxville through a Black led movement. • • We had the pleasure of presenting our year one shareout of our impact report. We are honored to be a part of the food and land justice work in our city. It excites us to think about the future of Black Knoxville's Food Landscape in East Knoxville. We wouldn't be able to do this work without United Way Greater Knoxville, Canvas Can Do Miracles, 3 Cubed plus a plethora of other partners who fund and support our movement. • • To think we are just at Y1 & have covered so much ground is astonishing. Again, we couldn’t do this without a receptive community, committed volunteers, aligned collaborators & partners. Last year, we had an ambition goal of establishing 100 gardens in the city by year 1. Well, we will have a count of 167+ gardens on the ground by December 2023. It’s an honor to lead this collective as it takes courage, grit, and fortitude to do this work while sowing seeds of resistance and wisdom. Knox County United Way #foodapartheid #growfoodnotlawns #foodrevolution #oppressivefoodsystems #dismantlethesystem #foodjustice #redlining #foodswamp #thecoloroflaw #foodinsecurity #fooddisparities #supportlocal #community #foodmovement #meikmeals #battlefieldfarms #ROOTEDEAST #thefoodfighters #eastsidefoodnetwork #powertothepeople #restoration #foodiscurrency #decolonizeourfoodsystems

Our No Cost Grocery Programs operate in a way that addresses some of the barriers to food access that exist in the traditional food pantry model. Learn more about our No Cost Grocery Programs at the link in our bio, or our website DenverFoodRescue.org. #foodaccess #foodrescue #foodjustice #foodsecurity #healthequity #healthequitynow #healthequityjustice #healthequityforall #foodwaste #denvervolunteers #volunteer #foodpantry #denverfood #denver #giveback #sustainability

Holistic Approach to Community Building: Growing Fruit, Veg, and More Discover our holistic approach to community building through training in media, housing, maintenance, and gardens. Join us as we delve into growing vegetables, fruit, berries, and even apple orchards in our therapeutic allotment. Learn valuable skills while supporting our food bank, which also offers home delivery. #CommunityBuilding #HolisticApproach #GrowingFruit #GrowingVegetables #TherapeuticAllotment #FoodBank #SkillsDevelopment #TeamLeadership #HealthyLiving #SupportingCommunity

Meet Ray, one of our incredibly volunteers! Every week, he rescues fresh food from a grocery store and delivers in to the No Cost Grocery Program at Spirit of the Sun. Want to volunteer with us? We have shifts every day of the week, and they take less than 2 hours. Sign up through the link in our bio, or at DenverFoodRescue.org. #foodaccess #foodrescue #foodjustice #foodsecurity #healthequity #healthequitynow #healthequityjustice #healthequityforall #foodwaste #denvervolunteers #volunteer #foodpantry #denverfood #denver #giveback #sustainability

Food as Medicine，agreed，but not only from farm...

6,928kgs of surplus food saved, turned into 16,556 meals served. Two incredible figures to mark the one year anniversary of the Canary Wharf Group Green Scheme in partnership with The Felix Project Project 👏 A huge thank you to all our Canary Wharf volunteers for your combined effort of 26,025 volunteering hours this year. These figures are particularly poignant as we mark #StopFoodWasteDay, an international day of action in the fight against food waste 🥕🍞 Creating a circular economy is a key part of our strategy. We aim to integrate this not just into how we build but also through collaboration with our communities including our employees, customers and local community. We’re pleased to share that vision with The Felix Project who save quality, surplus food and use it to distribute meals to Londoners in need. Being in a position to leverage the strength of our communities here at CWG, we convene people and businesses with the aim to create a positive impact for our local communities. We’re extremely pleased to see our customers volunteer on the Green Scheme and hope others are inspired by their good work to also sign up and help us in our fight against food poverty in London. To find out how you can make a direct impact on the fight against food poverty and waste, head to https://lnkd.in/eWD5AbNj #FoodWaste #CircularEconomy #CanaryWharf

According to the USDA, a community is considered a food desert if at least 500 people or 33 percent of the population located more than 1 mile (urban) or 10 miles (rural) from the nearest supermarket or large grocery store. At Denver Food Rescue, we fight to mitigate the presence of food deserts by providing the fresh food we rescue to underserved communities for free through our No Cost Grocery Programs. Learn more at DenverFoodRescue.org. Source: Dutko , P., Ver Ploeg, M., & Farrigan, T. (n.d.). Characteristics and influential factors of food deserts - USDA ERS. USDA ERS. https://lnkd.in/gGVK6hbe #foodaccess #foodrescue #foodjustice #foodsecurity #healthequity #healthequitynow #healthequityjustice #healthequityforall #foodwaste #denvervolunteers #volunteer #denverfood #denver #giveback #sustainability #fooddesert #foodinsecurity #fooddeserts

🍎 Making a Difference in Bamberg, SC! Access to fresh produce isn't a given for everyone, especially in Bamberg, SC, where there are no grocery stores—a true food desert. That's where Foodshare Bamberg has stepped in to fill the gap. As demand for fresh produce grew, ensuring efficient distribution became a challenge with the existing packaging process. That's when Lara Buss (Southeastern Housing and Community Development) and Foodshare Bamberg turned to Southeastern Paper Group, An Envoy Solutions Company for help. SEPG recommended introducing an auto-load box to streamline the process. Now, delivering essential goods is faster and more effective! Learn how SEPG and Foodshare Bamberg prove that small changes in packaging can make a big impact in serving communities! Read more! https://hubs.ly/Q02gXg0r0 #EnvoySolutionsInsider #PreAssembleBoxes #FoodshareBamberg #CommunityImpact #PackagingSolutions

At Denver Food Rescue, we believe that acknowledging the inherent dignity of our program participants is just as important as the food we provide. Our No Cost Grocery Programs, like the one pictured at Thomas Bean Towers, operate using a ‘choice model.’ This means that families get to decide what foods to take home based on what best suits their needs, rather than being handed a box of food that they may be unfamiliar with. We also require no ID or proof of income to get food at our No Cost Grocery Programs. We believe that everyone deserves fresh food, no matter their situation. Lastly, we break away from the traditional ‘food pantry’ model by delivering the food we rescue directly to a No Cost Grocery Program within 2 hours. This means we are able to provide the freshest quality food to our participants, and it enables us to rescue mostly fresh produce. Learn more about our mission at our website, DenverFoodRescue.org. #foodaccess #foodrescue #foodjustice#foodsecurity #healthequity #healthequitynow #healthequityjustice #healthequityforall #denvervolunteers #volunteer #denverfood #denver

It’s Joy of Giving month at Fortnum’s - when we encourage all our people to give their time to help out. Yesterday morning I joined Alex, Amy and Georgia from the team here in Piccadilly to sort and distribute surplus food at The Felix Project’s Deptford Depot in south east London.   Seeing Felix in action for the first time, the scale of our food waste problem is breathtaking. According to the founder of Felix the wonderful Justin Byam-Shaw “our food industry generates 223,000 tonnes of edible food surplus each year - but only 7% of this reaches the people who need it.” A lot of this surplus is unnecessary. We all know that perfectly good fruit and veg is rejected by our supermarkets (and to be fair, by their customers) all the time for being wonky or marked or inconsistently sized, but until you actually see what that rejection means in pallet-loads, it’s easy to assume that the system of food production and distribution in the U.K. is highly efficient. Well it isn’t. And we saw thousands of examples in just one shift yesterday.   The opportunity to help put that good quality food into the hands of those who really need it - individuals, social kitchens, schools and hostels, the elderly - seemed a chance too good to miss. We sifted through vast quantities of fresh produce, sorting the good from the bad (nearly all perfectly good) and grocery products by Use By and Best Before dates, so that they could be delivered in green Felix vans as a high priority. We worked hard - I’m not sure Georgia, Amy and Alex need to see another potato for a while, and I feel the same.   In terms of Fortnum’s contribution, we are hoping that by the end of September, our people will have completed 300 hours’ worth of volunteering time for 3 fantastic organisations: The Felix Project; Centrepoint UK (combatting youth homelessness) and The London Wildlife Trust. Not bad for a relatively small business, and I know alot of fun has been had and new friendships forged along the way.   If you have given up your time this month to help others, 👊 good on you.   #teamFortnums #volunteering #thefelixproject #sustainability #foodwaste #joyofgiving