As a triple bottom line company, Nextdoorganics is interested in opening pathways for our members to support local healthy food access and initiatives for lower income neighbors. Nextdoorganics members can support local food accessibility via contributions to the Local Food Fund which benefit our community partners promoting food and land access.
Nextdoorganics members can contribute to the Local Food Fund by adding a weekly subscription amount to your standing order or add one-time contributions via the web store to any order.
Nextdoorganics supports local food access to lower income residents of Bed Stuy via contributions from the Local Food Fund to the Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation. By providing fresh fruits and vegetables for distribution, cooking demonstrations and workshops, and community events, we are able to further support their work of increasing healthy food access in our neighborhood.
With generous support from City Harvest, United Way, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and NEBHDCo funding the construction costs, the Golden Harvest Food Pantry has built a new client choice pantry and demonstration kitchen at 376 Throop Avenue.
With the conversion to a supermarket-style client choice model, customers are now able to choose foods for themselves and their families according to their needs and preferences. New refrigeration equipment has enabled us to store and provide more fresh and frozen foods.
This effort supports healthier lifestyles and eating habits by providing community residents with a greater selection of vegetables and fruits, fresh meats, and whole grain rice, cereals, pasta and bread.
With the expansion, we aim to double the number of households served per month from 700 to 1400. The new pantry space has a benefits center as well as a demonstration kitchen, providing educational (and delicious!) workshops and cooking classes on healthy food selection and preparation, including:
- Food Empowerment Education and Sustainability Team (FEEST) gathers young people together to prepare and share healthy delicious food, learn about growing food, and provide a space for youth to become actively engaged in social issues that affect their lives.
- Culinary classes for families and adults. With support from Family Cook Productions, NEBHDCo will offer classes on healthy and delicious food preparation methods. Our Community Chefs will lead these classes.
- Film Screenings and Community Dinners invite our community to cook and eat together. We showcase films about the food system and have discussions about the food we eat and what happens when we come together as a community.
Golden Harvest Client Choice Food Pantry Project
By supporting the work of 596 Acres via contributions through the Local Food Fund, Nextdoorganics is able to help contribute to grassroots land access efforts in our own borough so that more folks can be growing some of their food with their own two hands.
In New York City, our friends at 596 Acres are community land access advocates. Their NYC Land Community Access Program started in Brooklyn in May 2011. There are now 23 new spaces in New York with official permission to transform public vacant lots into something better.
Hundreds of acres of vacant public land are hidden in plain sight behind chain-link fences in New York City, concentrated in neighborhoods disproportionately deprived of beneficial land uses. 596 Acres is building the tools for communities to open all these rusty fences and the opportunities within them to improve their surrounding communities.
596 Acres creates tools to help neighbors find the lot in their lives by:
- making municipal information available online and on the ground (e.g. by placing signs on vacant public land that explain a lot’s status and steps that the community can take to be able to use this land);
- providing education about city government and ways to participate in decisions that shape neighborhoods;
- assisting communities with legal support and campaign-development on land use issues;
- maintaining networks that allow communities to share knowledge and relationships with decision-makers;
- working with groups after they get access to land to build sustainable community governance as they become stewards of a public and inclusive resource; and
- advocating for municipal agencies to increase participatory decision-making surrounding public resources.
They create beautiful print materials as public education and documentation of our collective efforts creating our cities.
596 Acres is a project of the Fund for the City of New York.
In addition to these efforts, Nextdoorganics is currently waiting on our application to accept EBT/WIC payments for orders picked up from our Brooklyn Hub in Bed Stuy.
We also have attempted to provide access to our service in neighborhoods where there may be only so many options by offering home delivery ($5/order) via pedal-powered cargo bike and also partnerships with neighborhood farm-to-table establishments throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan where members can pick up their orders ($2/order).
Nextdoorganics also has a strong commitment to sourcing from new, young, urban, and activist farmers and farming groups that are helping transition us into a sustainable hyper-local food system. We usually arrange upfront payments with these types of farms to help them get off the ground each season.