9 Ways to Get Involved in Poverty Solutions
Ideas for you or your community to give food to those who need it.
1. ampleharvest.org
Are local community garden growers overwhelmed with tomatoes in the summer or squash in the fall? Instead of letting excess produce go to waste, connect with food pantries in your area that can use it.
2. How your local cinema can help:
Host a movie night to benefit food banks by staging a series of outdoor movie nights. Call it the “Canned Film Festival” and the price of admission is a can of food.
3. How your running club can help:
Sign up for Run 10 to Feed 10 (run10feed10.com), an 11 city race series organized by Women’s Health magazine and the Feed Foundation, a global hunger relief agency. Run 10 kilometers and the foundation will donate 10 meals to needy people in your community.
4. How your neighborhood restaurant can help:
Participate in “Halfsies, where patrons of participating restaurants who order certain menu items can pay the full price for a half portion, with a percentage of the difference going to local food banks and global non-
profit partners. (gohalfsies.com) Or your favorite eatery can use “Flash Food” (flashfoodrecovery.com), a mobile app that allows restaurants, hotels and caterers to indicate they have leftover food available for donation.
5. How your budding artist can help:
Make an edible sculpture. At (canstructionbrg), learn how to organize, enter or attend an area competition where giant sculptures (such as a life-size \/W Beetle) are created using cans of food, which are then donated to local
hunger-relief organizations.
6. How your busy family can help:
Order breakfast at the Double D Diner (doubleddiner.org). This virtual menu lists everything from a $1.89 cup of coffee to a $49.99 buffet – but you won’t actually receive your order. Instead, 90% of the proceeds
will go to fighting hunger.
7. How local farmers can help:
(investanacreorg). which is enlisting U.S. farmers to donate the proceeds from one or more acres to feed needy people in their own communities.
8. Helping school children:
Discreetly issue food-filled backpacks to needy school children before weekends. This idea was created by an 11 year old in Miami (joshuasheartorg).
9. “Family Independence Initiative” (Google it)
The Family Independence initiative (Fll), the national innovator of family-led approaches to increasing social and economic mobility in the U.S., released a study showing strong evidence that low»-income families presented with more economic and social opportunities will leave poverty and move forward on an upward trajectory. Their “Demonstration Projects” reflect dramatic results.