Oregon Food Bank: Ending Hunger for Good

At Oregon Food Bank, we are dedicated to ending hunger and its root causes by elevating the leadership of communities most impacted by food insecurity. One example is through the OFB Ambassador program, which recruits leaders from culturally-specific communities and provides 15 months of highly adaptive programming such as relationship building, intercultural exchange, organizational start up support and program development and implementation. Ambassadors create culturally-specific projects that aim to improve their communities' access to food security resources, address root causes of hunger, and create engagement opportunities for a more inclusive democracy. 

Our 2022 cohort of 6 OFB Ambassadors had a prolific year of work, supporting BIPOC, immigrant/refugee communities, and rural communities with food and resource access.  Ambassador activities included providing language appropriate political education to clients about the legislative process in Oregon; distributing bus tickets to Afghani families and creating culturally specific food box deliveries for the Arabic speaking community; working with OFB Learning Gardens to grow culturally specific leafy greens and root crops; implementing a Pacific Islander Food Distribution project; and creating a Necesidades del Dia (The Needs of the Day) program to purchase and deliver non-food essential items to farmworker communities in rural Oregon counties. 

The cohort of 2023 Ambassadors began in October of last year and are implementing projects across 7 Oregon counties. These 12 Ambassadors representing Black, Spanish speaking, Urban Native, Filipino, Sierra Leonean, Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Ukrainian communities have a myriad of community activities for the year which includes DV (domestic violence) survivor access to food; exploring first food harvesting partnerships; interviewing black youth around mental health services; holistic services and resource navigation; providing aid, cultural understanding and solidarity for refugees through a resource fair; and culturally specific/responsive food distributions. 

"No one is an island,” former Ambassador Denis Nyongesa shares. “We all need each other. Sometimes we don't realize that, but in the long run, when something hits, when something comes up, I realize that I can't do it on my own. I need help. And that's why we need our community."

At Oregon Food Bank, we know that the best solutions to ending hunger come from the communities themselves. And for over ten years, OFB has focused on improving food security by mobilizing local community members to build more just and resilient food systems through FEAST (Food, Education, Agriculture, Solutions Together). FEAST events are a series of community meetings and include a panel of local leaders, an introduction to community food systems organizing, identification of food system priorities, and the creation of a project plan. This approach challenges communities to address the broad social, economic, and political forces that impact access to healthy, sustainable food sources. FEAST communities have identified and implemented a wide variety of solutions over the last several years such as farm-to-school partnerships, nutrition classes, community gardens, and farmers markets.

The overall goals of FEAST are to:

• Organize and move communities into action towards more just and resilient food system
• Build food security through community identified and implemented solutions
• Improve access to nutrient dense local foods for all community members
• Incorporate advocacy, community organizing, and political education into FEAST Leadership Team support and community conversations 

By focusing on community driven ideas for food systems improvements, FEAST participants can dive deeper and create more sophisticated food systems projects, while learning to sustain these efforts for long-term impacts. The first FEAST event occurred in 2009 and since then has grown to engage over 129 communities throughout Oregon. Panel members, attendees, organizers  come from a variety of backgrounds including farming and agriculture, education, health care, economic development, and the public sectors. 

The majority of FEAST events are held in rural communities with high numbers of food insecure residents and few places to access quality, healthy food. In 2022, FEAST projects included a Black and Brown Farmer Networking Fair, the creation of a shared seed library, culturally specific food distribution for community members, a garden education curriculum for middle school students in partnership with a local farm (Seed to Table), and access to garden space, garden education, and produce distribution to low-income households. Planning for upcoming FEAST events for 2023 is underway, and will take place in Tillamook, Tigard, Ontario, Eugene, Burns, Forest Grove, Madras, Talent, Corvallis, and the Portland Metro area. 

Links:

• More information and how to get involved!