Last month, WSM shoppers donated more than 1,000 bags of fresh produce to PORCH’s Food for Families program though the co-op’s “Donate a BAG of Produce” campaign. Today, 100 refugee families received the first delivery of the bags of produce. The produce that WSM purchased for the donations weighed over 35 pounds and had to be delivered in overstuffed BOXES!
The abundance of produce was the result of General Manager Ruffin Slater leveraging the buying power of the co-op to purchase over $60 worth of produce for each $30 box. As a special treat, fresh organic strawberries were added when Slater secured a last-minute special on the seasonal berries. Tuesday afternoon, 20 WSM staff and owners met at WSM’s Food House facility to weigh, sort, and box the produce.
This morning, a WSM truck delivered the boxes of produce to two PORCH pickup sites in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. In addition to the box of fresh produce, each family also received a bag of non-perishables that PORCH collected through its neighborhood programs and a gallon of milk donated by MapleView Farms. Because WSM owners had donated the produce, PORCH was able to buy 2 whole chickens for each family.
The families who received the food at these two sites are refugees from Burma. PORCH shared with us the story of how the unique needs of these families led to the creation the Food for Families program.
PORCH’s Food for Families Program Serves Refugee Families
The families that we served on Wednesday are all refugees from Burma. We do not refer to them as “Burmese” because they are not all considered Burmese ethnically and prefer to be referred to by their individual ethnic identities. We have families from many different backgrounds including Burmese, Karen, and Chin, but there are several others represented as well.
All of these families have come to this country within the past 10 years, but the majority are even more recent immigrants. They all have official refugee status granted by the US because of their persecution back in Burma. Many have already become US citizens, and all of them have one working adult in their families. They work in jobs at UNC housekeeping, local restaurants and hotels, and other places. The biggest challenge for most of the people is the language barrier and explains why they end up in low-paying jobs. However, they take advantage of ESL classes and many of their children end up in college.
PORCH started serving the families from Burma after learning that they do not typically attend local food pantries, mostly because of their diet. They are accustomed to eating (and growing) fruits and vegetables and do not use our typical nonperishable American foods. Our goal with our PORCH fresh food program was to fill a need that was not being met elsewhere, so we started serving this population in March of 2010, starting with 12 refugee families. Today we are serving 275 families through our Food for Families program, including 100 families from Burma. All of the families enrolled in the PORCH fresh food program have been referred to us by social workers in the local schools because they are at risk of hunger. We provide a week’s worth of fresh produce, milk, eggs and meat once a month.
Please contact Brenda Camp at brenda.c@weaverstreetmarket.coop with questions or for additional information.