Feed Durham's Neighborhood Service Corps Initiative grows food for families in need; supports the exchange of practical skills like construction, gardening, and cooking; installs raised garden beds for family and community gardens; and reroutes excess resources from our homes, storages, and local businesses to folks in need.
If you are interested in joining a team and contributing to the work, please check the relevant boxes below.
Please note: we ask a number of questions about personal identity to ensure that we thoughtfully pair some of our most vulnerable contributors with safe opportunities to volunteer or receive support. All of these questions are OPTIONAL.
*Feed Durham will never share any of the data you provide without your explicit, written consent. Info will be used for team asset-mapping and project matching.*
ABOUT FEED DURHAM
Feed Durham is a scrappy mutual aid collective that came together in response to mounting hunger in the Durham area, due to COVID. Since 2020, we've fed 161,00+0 neighbors in need through our sprawling, epic, no-contact cookouts, where we lovingly prepare meals for 500 people per day, and offer grocery give-aways. We feed elders, people living in cars and on the streets, widows, unsupported LGBTQ+ folks, undocumented families, the homebound and chronically ill, elementary students and their families.
Feed Durham is an all-weather volunteer crew that sets up an outdoor kitchen and prepares food in the yard of a private residence with the use of 6 trailer smokers, 2 griddles, 9 burners, 3 washing stations, several socially-distanced tents for produce chopping, and a fridge trailer. Most of our volunteers are community organizers, teachers, artists, farmers, parents, and every day folks. We are a multi-faith, multi-racial, intergenerational collective. We feed people without judgment and serve the community alongside people who come from all walks of life, without judgment. All are welcome so long as folks treat one another with respect and kindness. We believe that we are only as safe as our least hungry neighbor. We serve more than just food. We serve hope.
For 2024, in addition to hosting cookouts, produce giveaways, and repair clinics, we are focused on the following:
- Launching tech innovations that close gaps between available food and household goods that normally go to landfill and the people who need those resources;
- Supporting our neighbors in growing their own food in family and community gardens by installing raised beds, providing seeds, offering gardening and food prep demos;
- Convening partners from Black, Brown, Refugee/Immigrant, LGBTQ+, White and wealthy communities to deepen relationships and support one another's common community care goals;
- Sharing organizing blueprints and guidelines from Feed Durham's first four years of organizing with partners in major cities through the U.S.;
- Publishing zines that teach the tactile skillsets that our volunteers and neighbors need in order to thrive during labor strikes, supply chain and utility disruptions, and civil unrest - tactile skillsets like foraging, carpentry, camping, lightweight medic skills (CPR, wound treatment), etc.;
- Publishing an interactive e-book "Lovingly Prepared by," documenting Feed Durham's first four years through photos, video, and reflective prose authored by Feed Durham volunteers, partners, neighbors we support, and nationally-recognized movement organizers.
For our December 2022 Holiday Grocery Giveaway, in less than 48 hours, we moved more than 18,000 pounds of fresh produce and chicken into Durham as well as Moore County, for folks who lost groceries after the attack on the power grid.
Fall 2022, we launched a Neighborhood Service Corps Initiative to grow food for plant stands and community fridges; install raised garden beds for neighbors in need; redirect our household excesses to people who need our under-used belongings; and share skillsets like basic home repair, outdoor cooking, gardening, land acknowledgement, community organizing, planetary stewardship, etc. For our 2023 Martin Luther King Jr. Plant + Plan event, we planted thousands of seeds for veggie, fruit and herb gardens - community, family, and indoor. In April 2023, we launched our first Repair Clinic, teaching folks to repair household goods in order to minimize personal expenses and as a landfill diversion practice. Attendees learned sewing, carpentry, and electronics repair.
In Summer 2023, "Lovingly Prepared by: A Multimedia Experience by Feed Durham" opened at the Durham Arts Council. Covering both the first and second floor gallery spaces, "Lovingly Prepared by" is a celebration of Feed Durham’s inspirational organizing during the pandemic. Curated by Feed Durham founder Katina Parker, the show featured artwork, photos, words and videos from a range of makers and community organizers, including: Filmmaker/Photographer Katina Parker, Sculptor/Muralist/Illustrator Dare Coulter, Emmy-nominated journalist/TED Talk Podcast host Saleem Reshemwala, Samantha Everette aka "The Shooting Beauty," Filmmaker Courtney Symone of "Silence Sam" fame, Filmmaker D.L. Anderson, Photographer/Filmmaker Tommy Coyote, Photographer Anna Carson DeWitt, Documentarian Elizabeth Miller-Derstine, Filmmaking Visionary Jasmine Leeward, and Independent Journalist Casey Toth (formerly of the News + Observer). The exhibit was funded by the Bull City Strong Say Something Strong Fund.
Please join us on our journey to eradicate food scarcity in our neighborhoods.
DONATE
• CashApp: $BullCityEats
• GoFundMe: gofundme.com/feeddurhamnc
• Monthly Pledge: patreon.com/feeddurhamnc
• Tax Deductible: tinyurl.com/5b2snaxp
• Check (Tax-Deductible): Feed Durham ℅ Southern Vision Alliance, P.O. Box 51698, Durham, NC 27717;
Memo Line: Feed Durham
