Fighting Hunger for our LGBTQ+ Neighbors

In New York City, over 30 percent of our trash is made up of food waste at the same time that 1.6 million New Yorkers are facing food insecurity. Every day, food sits in landfills while our neighbors go hungry, a crisis only heightened by the rising costs of food, gas, and rent in our city. To fight back against this immense waste, we at Food Bank For New York City work with local grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, and farms to rescue and redistribute an average of 1 million pounds of food a month. Last year, we rescued over 11 million pounds of fresh, nutritious food for our neighbors all across the five boroughs. This Hunger Action Month, we’re taking this work a step further by partnering with two Brooklyn-based businesses (Threes Brewing and Runner & Stone bakery) to create “Food For Thought,” a beer made from locally sourced and rescued bread. Try our collaboration at a special Beer Tasting on September 13 or anytime onsite at Threes Brewing. Click here for details. Brewers at Threes cutting the rescued baguettes from Runner & Stone for the brew; the finished product. One of the most difficult food items to rescue is bread. Baked goods have a short shelf life, which means there’s a small window in which they can be redistributed in their normal state. So, while Food Bank is able to distribute thousands of pounds of bread each year (with nearly 630,000 pounds distributed last year alone), there is still a potential for waste depending on when bread products can move out of our Warehouse & Distribution Center in the Bronx. Though bread itself may expire quickly, the active ingredients in bread can be turned into so many other things... like beer! While we may not have a brewery of our own at Food Bank, we thought it would be fascinating to see if we could partner with local businesses to save bread from the landfill and transform it into a beer that would both taste delicious and raise awareness about food waste in NYC. Enter “Food For Thought.” “When Food Bank approached us, they expressed a desire for this project to alter people’s perceptions about food waste,” explained Matt Levy, Head Brewer at Threes Brewing. “Brewing a beer with this objective presented an intriguing challenge and is a unique means of raising awareness about hunger and encouraging more conscious consumption of food.” Brewing "Food For Thought" at Threes Brewing. With Threes on board to brew, we reached out to Runner & Stone, a bakery located two blocks down from Threes in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. Runner & Stone enthusiastically agreed to contribute bread that would have otherwise been composted to the project, a move aligned with the bakery’s creative approach to food waste. “We work to repurpose any extra or scrap doughs that we produce, and the kitchen always tries to find innovative ways to use all parts of an ingredient (think turning carrot tops into pesto or bones into home-made bone broth),” said Peter Endriss, head baker at Runner & Stone. “We also partner with ‘Too Good To Go’ [an app that connects consumers to restaurants with surplus food] and donate leftover items to our local soup kitchen, CHiPS [a Food Bank member agency that serves communities in Park Slope, Brooklyn].” Enjoy a pint of "Food For Thought" at Threes Brewing in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Every purchase of beer will provide five meals for New Yorkers in need. Together, this collaboration between a brewery, a bakery, and a Food Bank produced “Food For Thought,” a spicy, snappy lager with notes of red current and rye now for sale at Threes (located here). Every purchase of beer will provide five meals for New Yorkers in need. To learn more about “Food For Thought,” click this link. You can also visit our Hunger Action Month landing page to join us in taking action against hunger today.

September is Hunger Action Month, a time for all of us to stand up and fight back against food insecurity in the boroughs of New York City and the United States at large. In NYC alone, food insecurity has increased by 44 percent due to the ongoing pandemic – that's 1.6 million New Yorkers struggling every day to feed themselves and their families. Though the numbers are daunting, the truth is that we can fight hunger together. To see how you can join us in nourishing our neighbors this Hunger Action Month, check out the actions below. Donate An easy way to get involved in the fight against food insecurity is to give generously to hunger relief organizations that inspire you. At Food Bank, $1 can provide up to 5 meals for our neighbors in need. Click here to help power the programs that get food into our most vulnerable communities. Fundraise Want to kick your giving up a notch? Then consider launching an online fundraiser to encourage your family and friends to join you in supporting our mission. It’s as simple as clicking this link and spreading the word on social media. And don’t worry, the link above will provide you with all the guidance you’ll need to get started. Raise Awareness Speaking of social media, a fantastic way to engage with Hunger Action Month is to raise awareness about food insecurity and poverty online. You can either share the content we post or let our cache of social media assets inspire you. No matter what you share, make sure to use the #FeedAll and tag us @FoodBank4NYC! Advocate Food Bank’s advocacy work seeks to organize and engage community action in the fight against hunger. Join us now in urging Congress to support anti-poverty priorities in the American Families Plan, including permanent expansion of the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits, expanded Summer-EBT, and additional investments into The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Click here to raise your voice. Learn While all of these actions are incredibly valuable, perhaps the most important thing you can do is learn. Learn about food insecurity and the systems that cause it. Learn about the work being done to fight it. Empower yourself with knowledge and you’ll be amazed by the things you can do. To start, read our recent interview with Food Bank President & CEO Leslie Gordon in which she chats about the significance of Hunger Action Month to the work we do.

This Pride month, we here at Food Bank For New York City are turning a critical eye to the pervasive issues of poverty and food insecurity in the LGBTQ+ community. Though Pride is certainly a time for celebration, it’s also a time for acknowledging the work still needed to be done to achieve true equity for the LGBTQ+ community. Part of that work necessitates addressing the immense hunger needs of LGBTQ+ individuals. According to a 2020 report from the Williams Institute, 27% of LGBTQ+ folks across the United States are currently facing food insecurity. Even before the pandemic, one in five LGBTQ+ individuals were already living in poverty, a rate 76% higher than the national average. It’s no wonder then that LGBTQ+ people also participate in social safety net programs like SNAP (formerly food stamps) at much higher rates than their straight counterparts. Though many states (including New York) have implemented widespread non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ folks, the reality is that many non-straight people still experience rampant discrimination in the realms of housing, employment, education, and healthcare. Therefore, when we talk about food insecurity in the LGBTQ+ community, we must recognize how it intersects with other challenges that make it difficult for non-straight people to secure the resources they need to survive. We must also acknowledge that hunger and poverty disproportionately impact those most marginalized within the LGBTQ+ community itself, namely trans people, non-binary individuals, seniors, people of color, and those living with HIV. Even in communities with strong non-discrimination protections, these vulnerable groups still face higher rates of poverty than the general public, due in large part to certain stigmas they may face in society. SAGE (an NYC-based organization dedicated to serving the needs of older LGBTQ+ adults and a Food Bank member agency) recently released a study that illuminated these disparities, finding that one-third of LGBTQ+ seniors in New York City are living at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. The report also found that 52% of respondents were being forced to deny or hide their identities from their healthcare providers and that 67% of LGBTQ+ seniors in New York City feared neglect from long-term care specialists. To support our LGBTQ+ elders, we partner with SAGE to provide food for its meal program. In addition to our work with SAGE, we’re proud to partner with a wide range of other community-based organizations that tailor their programming to serve the unique needs of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers. One of these groups is GMHC, an organization founded in the early 1980s to uplift New Yorkers living with HIV. In addition to offering mental health services, housing assistance, and immigration support to its clients, GMHC has also long provided a safe space for folks living with HIV to gather and share food. As GMHC’s Director of Nutrition & Meals Josie Thiele explained to me, the GMHC Meals Program was a vital lifeline for New Yorkers living with HIV in the 1980s and 90s. At that time, folks who showed visible signs of the virus were often barred from eating in public spaces, so GMHC became one of the few spots where they could safely come together. The program provided nutritious free food, yes, but it also provided a place in which those living with HIV could simply exist without shame, stigma, or judgment. And though the Meals Program has evolved over time, Thiele says this shame-free approach to service is what has allowed the organization to better support and understand its diverse array of clients, many of whom identify along the LGBTQ+ spectrum. “When folks can feel comfortable expressing who they are, it makes it easier for them to access the services they need,” Thiele said. “Our clients know that when they walk through our doors, there’s no judgment. We work to make it a safe space for everyone. As staff, we always introduce ourselves with our pronouns so folks know they can express that as well. In general, we want to make people feel comfortable in a way that in many other places they might feel afraid or stigmatized.” By breaking through these stigmas, GMHC is able to establish trust with its clients, which allows it to engage folks with a wide range of services to meet their unique and varied needs. As Thiele told me, GMHC endeavors to serve its clients holistically by recognizing that food insecurity is hardly ever just about food. “For most of our clients, there’s a variety of things that are going to lead to food insecurity,” Thiele said. “So, we have food services, including our congregant meals, food pantry, and nutrition counseling with registered dieticians, but we also offer course development programs for clients looking to write a resume or learn new computer skills. We also have legal services to help folks navigate immigration and housing laws as well as mental health and substance abuse services.” “By focusing on all of these different things, we can help our clients achieve their goals and feel fully supported,” she continued. “Giving people food is great, but helping them to find stable housing or a stable job helps to minimize the food insecurity in general.” At the end of the day, the LGBTQ+ community is no monolith, and fighting back against hunger and poverty within it requires a nuanced, specific, and dynamic approach. It requires acknowledging that many people’s queer identities intersect with other identities that may further complicate their lived experiences, which means that a cisgender white gay man, for example, will likely have very different needs than those of an immigrant trans woman of color. Responding to these needs requires listening. It requires persistence. And it requires serving others without shaming them for being who they are. As Tyrone Hanley of the National Center for Lesbian Rights said in an interview with the Food Research & Action Center last year: “When people are already dealing with the vulnerability of being poor, and then on top of that adding worries about being discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, that can prevent people from receiving the services they desperately need.” To learn more about how Food Bank serves the LGBTQ+ community all year long, click this link.