Category: News

June 7, 2016 – Slate Magazine: How a network of food banks learned to feed more people by embracing the free market. By Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan

Canice Prendergast is an economics professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He works in the language of dense mathematical models that aim to clarify why, for example, service at airport security is so dismal and why that might actually be a good thing. (Because a few of the Department of Homeland Security’s “customers” may be bomb-carrying terrorists, it’s not exactly a customer-is-always-right setting.) He’s a serious enough art collector that when Booth built a $125 million campus across the way from Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark Robie House, Prendergast was put in charge of a million-dollar budget for decorating its hallways. Instead of the usual array of bland landscapes and oil paintings of old white men in suits that populate the walls of many business schools, Booth’s walls are filled with abstract, conceptual works that challenge and often mystify its faculty and students.  More

6/1/2016 – RI Community Food Bank: We are looking for folks to help with community outreach and work in our community gardens. Visit our website to learn how you can make a difference.  More

May 24 – GoLocal Providence:  Led and co-founded by Moses Brown students Abraham Bloom and Sinjon Goldberg, the Providence “Giving Garden” is dedicated to helping the Food Bank of Rhode Island and those with special needs.  “At the Giving Garden our mission is to unlock the potential of willing and able labor and unused corporate green space while enhancing a sense of fulfillment for those who are cognitively challenged. We believe our strategy is both unique and beneficial to both the community and the individuals. By engaging community activism and corporate responsibility we believe there is a potential intersection of corporate green spaces and willing and able labor that would like to contribute to their community,” said Sinjon Goldberg, co-founder of The Giving Garden.  More

May 19, 2016: National Public Radio  Mention the concept of food waste, and for many people, it’s likely to conjure images of rotting fruit and vegetables or stale meals unfit for consumption. But a lot of the food that gets tossed out in America — some $162 billion worth each year, enough to fill 44 skyscrapers — is fresh, nutritious and downright delicious: think plump eggplants, bright yellow squashes, giant, vibrant-orange carrots with a crisp bite. The kind of beautiful produce that would be perfectly at home in, say, this giant vegetable paella made by celebrity chef José Andrés and his team.  More

May 20, 2016: Rhode Island Community Foodbank   Ensuring No One Goes Hungry At the Food Bank, the number of clients we serve remains high at 60,000 per month, many of them some of the most vulnerable members of our society: families with children and senior adults. We continue to perform as the state’s center for food acquisition and distribution, last year delivering 9.7 million pounds of food to people in need through our network of member agencies. Take a look at some of our accomplishments over the past year as well as stories about the people we’ve helped and those who have helped us.  More

May 11, 2016 – Turn to 10:  For 30 years, Bonnie Smith has been the face of the North Kingstown Food Pantry, doing whatever she can to help those in need. During her time at the pantry, Smith has helped increase the charity’s impact on the local community. Last year alone, the pantry went from serving 200 or so families, to 6,989 families and individuals in the North Kingstown area. “At this point, I’m known as the community liaison,” she said. “I’m kind of in every aspect of the operation of it.” More

Rhode Island Community Food Bank: Community Kitchen is a culinary job-training program for low-income or jobless adults. Chefs teach the full-time, 14-week course. Local restaurants and professional kitchens offer internships to students enrolled in the program. Students gain cooking skills and learn about food service as well as work readiness skills to succeed on the job. They also create healthy meals for Kids Cafe which feeds children who might go hungry. More

May 16, 2016 – Vox Energy & Environment During World War II, millions of Americans planted “victory gardens” in their backyards, eventually supplying a hungry nation with 40 percent of its homegrown fruits and vegetables. Once the war was over, those urban farms withered away, supplanted by increasingly efficient large-scale rural agriculture. Now urban farming is staging a curious comeback. In recent years, US cities like Detroit,Washington, DC, and San Francisco have set up programs encouraging people to grow crops in vacant lots or on rooftops. Michelle Obama has promoted the resurgence of community gardens. Advocates sometimes tout urban farming as the solution for “food deserts” in poor neighborhoods.  More

May 13, 2016 – Daily Kos A growing movement is spreading throughout U.S. cities that is feeding people, providing jobs, and helping the environment—urban farming. This is a lot bigger than putting some tomato and zucchini plants in your backyard. These are local efforts, city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood, to convert vacant land in America’s cities into small farms. Sometimes it’s not even vacant land. In New York City, for instance, there are plans this summer for a floating food forest on a barge going up and down the Hudson River that will let people come and pick produce—for free. More

May 13, 2016 – New England Real Estate Journal: Edesia is a non-profit dedicated to treating and preventing childhood malnutrition in the world’s most vulnerable populations by manufacturing a range of ready-to-use foods (RUFs) to treat and prevent malnutrition. Recently, we were joined by Governor Raimondo, U.S. senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, congressman David Cicilline, and representatives from USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to celebrate the grand opening of our new facility at the Quonset Business Park. More