A Michigan-based philanthropy group has invested $1 million to help combat food insecurity in historically marginalized Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities.
The philanthropy group, known as the Kresge Foundation, recently awarded the money to the Equitable Food Oriented Development in the form of a grant. Also known as the EFOD, the foundation is a grassroots movement led by members of Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities. Their main focus is creating strategies to develop food security in their communities through food and agriculture programs. As a result, these neighborhoods will be more empowered and will have the ability to bring about social, health and economic change.
“These projects create critical infrastructure needed to support access to healthy food, develop new and existing businesses owned by Black, Indigenous, and people of color, and build a strong pathway for crisis-resistant community-owned revitalization,” said a spokesperson for the Kresge Foundation in a statement.
The money will be divided amongst eight organizations that are part of the EFOD Collaborative program. Part of the money will go to Oakland, California to fund Oakland Bloom’s Understory Worker Collective, an organization that gives refugees and immigrants the training they’d need to open up their own food businesses, and to San Diego to support Project New Village’s Good Food District Hub, a community effort that works to provide communities with food access and better environmental conditions.
Other recipients include North Charleston’s Fresh Future Farm, an organization working alongside Black farmers to provide produce to marginalized communities; Portland’s Black Food Sovereignty Coalition, a project that helps connect Black and Brown communities and inspires them to become owners to ensure food security; Detroit Black Community Food Security Network Inc. Detroit People’s Food Cooperative, a program focused on building a community-owned grocery store; and Boston Farms Community Land Trust’s Boston Farms initiative to offer local farmers more space to grow produce.
Washington’s Dreaming Out Loud program aimed at helping local farmers and members of food businesses will get a piece of the grant as well as Puerto Rico’s El Departamento de la Comida, a project working towards the building of food hubs and commercial kitchens to help the people who are still recovering from Hurricane Maria.
Food insecurity in the U.S. has increased since 2020, partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially amongst the Black community. According to a report by non-profit organization Feeding America, 1 in 5, or 21.6%, Black Americans were left to deal with food insecurity in 2020. This percentage is double that of white Americans; only about 13% were reported to struggle with this problem.
In addition to pre-consisting factors like systematic racism and discrimination, these rates were also a result of the increased unemployment rates in the Black community. In a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center, 43% of Black Americans reported that they experienced either a job loss or a wage decrease.
The Kresge Foundation is acknowledging these unemployment rates by donating an extra $210,000 to the EFOD as funding to add more technical advisors to the team.
