Sha-Quana on a Mission

Elizabeth Romano is the Senior Director of Operations at Food Bank For New York City's Warehouse & Distribution Center in the Bronx. Each day, she shows up early and leaves late to make sure life-changing produce, hygiene products, and shelf-stable goods reach the homes of those who need them most. Help us get period products, hygiene essentials, and childcare resources to women and girls in need! Elizabeth Romano at Food Bank's Warehouse & Distribution Center in the Bronx. When Liz was growing up with five siblings in the Bronx, that home was her own, and she recalls waiting on long pantry lines with her mother to get food for their family. But at the time, she didn't even realize that's what they were doing, as the pantry workers always treated them with such warmth, dignity, and respect. Elizabeth with her younger siblings. Now, Liz gets to return that energy right back to the city she loves. "At the end of the night, I know that our work helped feed somebody today," she told us. "Our donors help any sibling that has to go out and stand in a pantry line with their parent... it can be anything that changes your life." Hit play and meet Liz below: Join us in celebrating the women we serve and those who power our mission every day at this link. Together, we can make progress on a more hopeful, dignified, and equitable future for ALL.

Running from March 1 to May 1 each year, Food Bank's Woman to Woman campaign is all about raising funds to provide women and girls facing food insecurity with the period products, hygiene essentials, and childcare resources they need to thrive. To support this work, we run ads throughout the city featuring women and girls proudly served by Food Bank member agencies. At this year's photoshoot, we met Jessica, who came to us on the recommendation of our friends at The HopeLine in the Bronx. Jessica showed up early, ready to offer her voice and perspective to the campaign. When we started talking to her, it was clear that she had a story to share, one rooted in struggling to feed her family of five amidst cuts to her benefits and the rising costs of everything from baby formula to diapers and topical cream. Jessica at Food Bank's Community Kitchen & Food Pantry with her daughter. Jessica is just one of many New Yorkers fighting to make ends meet, not only for herself, but for her family. By supporting Food Bank's Woman to Woman campaign, you can help fill in the gaps for women like Jessica all across the five boroughs. Meet Jessica and hear her story below: In a city that never gives up on its people, we’re committed to delivering services and solutions that empower everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from. We want to change what's possible today so that the women and girls we proudly serve can take charge of their stories and chart new paths for the future. Join us in this work today and you can help us give for good.

Welcome to The Core, Food Bank For New York City’s new blog! We created this space to dive a little deeper into the subjects, stories, and stakeholders that power our mission. You may be familiar with Food Bank as the city's largest hunger relief organization, but our work actually spans a great deal more. So, The Core will give you insight into how we operate, who we serve, and what kinds of impact we make across all five boroughs of the greatest city in the world. But don’t worry, we won’t just be talking about New York! Anyone and everyone with a hunger for food justice, equity, and advocacy will find a home here where they can learn new ideas and read some fantastic stories. To that end, we’ll have content covering a variety of subjects, including: Activism, Nutrition + Health, Financial Empowerment, and Stories from the Field. So, let’s meet these categories and figure out how we use them here at Food Bank and what they’ll mean to you. Activism Activism is at the heart of everything we do. To fight hunger is to actively fight poverty, which includes standing up for and supporting low-income New Yorkers and their families. This means not only getting them the resources they need to survive and thrive, but also advocating for policies that serve their best interests. So, we’ll be tagging stories that deal with both activism and advocacy in the hunger space. We’ll share information about the fights we’re taking on and the ones waging at the local, state, and federal levels. To get involved with our own efforts, join Food Bank’s action team. Nutrition + Health Another important facet of our work is nutrition, specifically as it relates to education, health and equity. Our nutrition program focuses on teaching folks how to establish and maintain healthy habits on a limited budget, which helps to fight hunger while addressing some of poverty’s key contributing factors – in both the short and long term. So, we’ll be giving you your fill of yummy recipes, nutrition tips, and resources exploring the relationships between food, health, culture, and poverty. Food Assistance In this category, we’ll explore not only the topic of food assistance, but also SNAP benefits and enrollment as well as insights into the various factors that impact emergency food providers across the city. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to find food whenever they need it. To do that, we’ve created an array of tools New Yorkers can use to source free meals and connect with local pantries and soup kitchens for immediate food assistance. If you’re looking for food assistance now, check out our virtual food locator. Financial Empowerment Financial empowerment refers to the sense of security that comes from being in control of one’s finances. Have you ever been down to your last 20 bucks, with more month to go before your next check? Not a great feeling. Well, for many low-income New Yorkers, living in a city as expensive as ours makes that feeling a constant companion. To help the New Yorkers we serve feel more financially empowered, we offer an array of financial resources, from free tax assistance for the working poor to SNAP enrollment and community-based financial coaching. We designed these tools because the truth is, fighting hunger takes more than food. If there’s a change in tax policy that could impact New Yorkers or if we’re leading a free (virtual) workshop on financial management, we’ll make sure to cover it here. We’ll also provide tips anyone can use to become a better budgeter! Research The hunger space is a dynamic one, so it’s important to stay on top of all the latest research to ensure that our messaging is current to our cause and relevant to our communities. Food Bank’s proprietary research has long been industry-leading, but we also rely on reports from other prominent institutions to inform the work we do. To keep you up-to-date, we’ll be sharing all of our latest research findings on this blog. Stories from the Field Here, we’ll feature photographs, interviews, and videos from the field. We work with over 1,000 food pantries, soup kitchens, and schools across the city, and our partners on the ground are the ones who keep this whole operation running. And trust us – they've got plenty of stories to tell! We’ll also share stories from those who experience hunger firsthand so that you can better understand what food insecurity actually looks like. To make sure you never miss a single anecdote, hit subscribe to get fresh updates on The Core as soon as they arrive.