Recipes, Nutrition, and Food Culture Do you ever think about how to build a healthy food culture with your food bank customers? One way for customers to share and create culture is through exchanging recipes with each other that utilize ingredients sourced from the food…
Vashon has a thriving gardening community that is also committed to food justice and equity for all. Gardeners all over the island are ready to grow produce for the food bank can increase food security for themselves and their neighbors.
When purchasing produce from farmers, a food bank acts like one large CSA customer or wholesale CSA customer. Securing grant funding is essential to support a farm to food bank purchasing system, and local food system programming is essential in the development of a secure food system in a community.
Providing vegetable starts to clients at your organization is a great tool to reduce food insecurity and empower community members with free fresh produce. Not everyone has the space, time, or skills to have a garden, so use vegetable varieties that grow well in pots and don’t need too much advanced work..
Effective gleaning programs frequently run into this problem each harvest season: all of the apple, pear, or plum trees ripen at the same time, and an organization gets overwhelmed with more produce than clients can take. Here are some tips for making use of extra produce in order to reduce overall food waste in your community..
No matter what size a glean is, proper equipment makes the task go smoothly and facilitates proper transportation to keep produce in good shape. Supplies that are purchased new can be costly. Search local facebook pages, craigslist, garage sales, thrift stores, and farm sales for what your organization needs..
Raising awareness and recruiting volunteers take a significant amount of planning time when done correctly. When engaging community members, it’s important to have a strategy behind your interaction..
Creating a strategic plan for donor outreach makes the growing season more bountiful for farmers and food banks alike. Winter is an excellent opportunity to take advantage of farmer downtime to introduce one’s organization or build on an existing relationship..
Harvest for Vashon volunteer outreach has taken on many different forms over the last two years, and a consistent factor to account for is the unique profile of island neighbors. The island has a population of 10,000, most of whom are elderly residents and young families..
Harvest for Vashon began in 2017 as a collaboration between two Vashon Island organizations dedicated to local food justice. The first organization is the Food Access Partnership (FAP), a committee of the Vashon Island Growers’ Association (VIGA)..