New community fridge aims to ease hunger in Anchorage

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, Ziona Brownlow confirmed volunteers the ins and outs of the new neighborhood fridge in Mountain Watch, a north Anchorage community that is a single of the most ethnically assorted communities in the region. It’s also an spot that is been specific by the U.S. Office of Agriculture as obtaining superior levels of food stuff insecurity.

Brownlow stated about 10% of Anchorage people, upward of 30,000 people, experience from foodstuff insecurity. 

“So just one in every 10 folks that we know doesn’t know the place they are heading to get their foodstuff from,” she claimed. “They may have to make your mind up if they’re going to spend for their prescription or pay back for gas or if they are going to fork out for food items.”

Brownlow hopes the new local community fridge can help fight hunger in the metropolis, wherever meals insecurity soared all through the pandemic and exactly where inflation carries on to push up meals charges. “Bring what you can, get what you want, and help us #FeedAnchorage,” reported the invitation for Saturday’s grand opening.

Hear to this tale:

Brownlow commenced wondering about the thought of a local community fridge in the course of the pandemic. She’d been doing the job in food items activism since 2018, when she founded Foodstuff for Thought Alaska. It began as a blog and she wrote about the approaches community organizations have been helping hold persons fed. Then COVID-19 strike.

“My form of ‘shop little, eat local’ mission received drowned in this wave of ‘Save Anchorage’ and ‘keep the dining places open,’” she reported. “And so I stepped away from that and food stuff running a blog and just appeared at the very apparent want of staff becoming laid off and the improve of homelessness providers and the improve of need at the Foods Financial institution.”

She saw local community fridges pop up across the place in metropolitan areas like Miami, Atlanta and Chicago. And she determined to check out to open one particular in Anchorage. She began arranging with other community teams.

Although it is been a chronic challenge for years, food insecurity ballooned during the pandemic as people today dropped their work opportunities, claimed Cara Durr, chief of advocacy and community plan at the Foodstuff Bank of Alaska. 

“In the commencing of the pandemic, we saw the degree of have to have shoot up about 75%, which of class is just unparalleled,” Durr stated. “Every day we were chatting to individuals who missing all their house earnings, are turning to programs like SNAP and our food pantries. And it has remained elevated at any time considering that.”

Durr claimed concerns like inflation are holding meals insecurity higher than pre-pandemic levels. 

“So we’re observing people degrees creep up genuinely close to what we noticed at the height of the pandemic, which is quite terrifying,” she explained.

The Foods Lender functions with federal grants and applications to distribute foods across Alaska, so it’s constrained in which businesses it can spouse with, reported Durr.

“We simply cannot partner with something like a totally free fridge job just since there isn’t the degree of monitoring for meals security and regulation that we are held to” she claimed. “But just for the reason that we’re not partnering doesn’t indicate it’s not a excellent thought or anything required by the neighborhood.”

Durr reported which is also not to suggest the food stuff at the community fridge is not safe and sound to consume, and Brownlow reported that volunteers observe countrywide foods basic safety precautions when managing food.

Brownlow reported she thinks the local community fridge is a lot more particular than the conventional foods lender design. 

“We’re coming as shut as we can to mirroring what foods distribution looks like in a nonprofit industrial elaborate, but decentralizing — earning it additional available at a grassroots, neighbor-to-neighbor degree,” she stated.

Brownlow wishes the local community fridge to complement the function the Foodstuff Financial institution is presently carrying out.

The new local community fridge is tucked suitable off Mountain Check out Drive. It’s about the sizing of a small lose, with a few double-door fridges within, like the type you could see in a grocery retail outlet. There are stands for fruit and metallic shelves drilled into the wall for canned items. Cup Noodles containers and granola bars have been stacked in a corner. The outdoors is weatherized, and Brownlow stated it was bear-proofed as well. Volunteers look at on the fridge during the working day.

For Alaskans looking to get anything to take in, it’s as simple as going for walks up and taking meals.

Brownlow stated donations can be dropped off at the fridge doorways. And they’re not just accepting foods. On a table in the vicinity of the volunteer indication-up on Saturday have been quick COVID tests.

Brownlow reported other non-perishable, non-foodstuff products like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer are recognized as perfectly.

“Diapers, toddler formulation, cleanliness solutions, you need to share them,” Brownlow mentioned. “I’m on the lookout in below and I’m observing pads and there’s juice… there’s Similac in right here. It just will make my heart so delighted.”

Brownlow said she seems ahead to observing other damage-reduction products like bandages, contraception and fentanyl check strips in the fridge.

Whilst the fridge isn’t constrained to just food, Brownlow stated it is minimal to what sorts of food and merchandise it can acknowledge at this level. 

“So we don’t have a freezer, and it’s less difficult for us to keep away from any mishandling of foods if we do not have any uncooked meats, any frozen meats, any frozen food that might want to continue being frozen,” she said. “So we really do not want just about anything like that there. We never want any medicine, liquor, furniture, clothes.”

Brownlow explained in addition to Mountain Watch, the neighborhoods of Muldoon, Spenard, Authorities Hill and Midtown have been targeted by the USDA as places with high prices of food stuff insecurity. She hopes to see fridges in all those communities in the long term. 

The Mountain Watch community fridge is now open up every single day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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