This year’s Cooperative Community Fund (CCF) grants help organizations connect the food insecure in our community with healthy food. The projects funded also provide innovative ways for the recipients to have choices and input into food received based on their needs and the preferences of their families.
Thanks to your generous contributions, three local nonprofit organizations received a total of $5,200 in grants from our Cooperative Community Fund. Weaver Street grows the endowment fund through contributions from owners and shoppers, including purchases of Hope for the Holidays products, proceeds from the April and October wine shows, and donated owner dividends and shares.
A committee of worker and consumer owners selected these recipients for their innovative and collaborative community projects. This year the committee retained $2,220 of the available grant funds to award in January 2020. A call for grant applications will be announced November 6.
$1900 to PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro to continue and expand its “PORCH Cooks” educational program. PORCH Cooks aims to increase consumption of fresh foods by providing nutrition education and recipes to help families participating in the Food for Families (FFF) program. Families also receive the award-winning cookbook Good and Cheap, Eat Well on $4/Day, which focuses on healthy eating on the equivalent daily funds provided by the SNAP/food stamp program. 85% of the FFF recipients report that the PORCH Cooks program helped them use more of the food provided by PORCH.
$1700 to the Inter-Faith Council to support a new “member choice” model for the new Food Pantry at the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service (IFC). IFC’s Food Pantry provides member-clients with dependable access to fresh foods, including vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, and dairy. The new Food Pantry, which opens in 2020, will feature a member choice model that allows member-clients to make food selections most appropriate for their families. The grant funds will be used to purchase convertible hand trucks to facilitate the efficient stocking of fresh food and to purchase grocery carts to provide a more dignified and convenient shopping experience for member-clients.
$1500 to the Farm at Penny Lane to expand the Farm-to-Home Produce Pack program. The Farm-to-Home Produce Pack program provides boxes of fresh healthy produce to client-patients of the Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health. The produce is grown at the Farm at Penny Lane. Client-patients receive hands-on support from family or staff for handling and preparing the fresh food. Grant funds will be used to pay for construction costs to build a walk-in cold storage space. The cold storage space will allow the farm to increase its yield, maintain the nutrients of the fresh produce, and increase the number of clients served.