I designed and ran a food bank on my street for 3 years.

The Little Free Food Pantry 

Mutual Aid Project in Berkeley, California 

2020- 2023 
 

Gift Economics, Food Rescue, Food Insecurity, Honor System

This project started innocently with me wanting to share fruit from a pineapple guava tree that was produced a lot of fruit. Much of it was going to waste. I thought: Hmmm... maybe we should create a food pantry? A kiosk where food could be shared at any time of the day?  It turned into a design project and an experimental project where I designed a website for it, and made all the signage, postcards that were needed to promote it. I wrote letters to local businesses and food banks to procure food donations and ran food drives in my neighborhood that were quite successful. It was active for three years and in October 2023, I decided it was time to close it and switch my focus to a different project.

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I met so many people over the years who were either experiencing homelessness or food insecurity and quite often the people who used it had housing. Many people came out of their way to drop off food to share with people who needed it. It was incredible to see it in action. People came by bike, car and on foot to donate or to take food home.  You just see the beauty in people when they can be generous when they have very little, or a lot.

 

I made a daily commitment to stock it, clean it and pick up large quantities of bread and food donations to share with anyone who needed food.  I asked friends and neighbors to help me pick up bread at ACME bakery every Wednesday. 

 

The food pantry was my main focus for three years and I learned a lot by doing it. I would make it a Pop Up if I did it again, so it would just be open for specific time periods. This way, I could make sure the food was distributed fairly. 

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Visit the website that I made for my food pantry > 

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