Meals for Good Inc.

To reduce food insecurity for all people living in New York City by increasing access and choice to culturally relevant healthy food.

We envision a time when everyone in NYC will have equitable access to a variety of healthy, fresh food.

Goal One: issue grants for fresh produce to underfunded food pantries and to give additional 'incentive' grants to try new produce that may be more culturally familiar to some clients

Goal Two: Give people agency over their own food, particularly those who do not qualify for SNAP, by working with community based organizations to distribute vouchers for neighborhood supermarkets

Goal Three: to expand distribution of vouchers for local grocery stores to every borough.

we have paid for a number of zoom opportunities including at Candid/Guidestar, NonProfit New York, the Lawyers Alliance and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Classes have informed us on fundraising, on legal issues for the Board, and taxes among others. We also receive many newsletters, among them from Hunter College's Food Policy Center and CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute

Meals For Good began by partnering with restaurants that added $0.25-$1.00 to one food item on their menus, and the money would then be awarded to underfunded pantries in the neighborhoods of the restaurants. During COVID, we could no longer rely on the restaurants that were trying so hard to survive themselves, and we began fundraising from individuals and applying for some grants. We continued to supply pantries, mostly in Harlem and the South Bronx, but we began to experiment with other ways to help people - particularly families - obtain the missing groceries they needed and wanted. We organized pop-up pantries for unemployed restaurant workers and people in low-income housing; we gave incentives to community based organizations for their constituencies to buy more produce at farmers markets, we supplied free fridges with fresh produce in the South Bronx and Harlem, we surveyed pantry lines to see what foods people needed but did not receive, and finally, we started a voucher program (which we continue today), where we give community based organizations vouchers to distribute to their constituencies for local supermarkets. Constituencies include mostly those who are not allowed to receive federal funding because of immigration status or because the salaries are slightly over the poverty line. We found that people were missing meats, fresh produce and kitchen staples such as flour and corn oil. They were also missing foods that were part of their culture such as bok choy, jalapenos, collards. We are continuing to supply both pantries with fresh produce and community organizations with supermarket vouchers in Harlem, the South Bronx and recently in Brooklyn and expect to start in Queens this winter. We also continue to do research to ensure that we are reaching the people most in need, and significantly reducing their food insecurity. https://www.nycfoodpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Meals-for-Good-Grocery-Store-Incentive-Program.pdf