Feed Louisville article

Forget Waste and Feed Louisville

Across the country, and in Louisville, Kentucky, many people and families are at crisis for hunger, yet close to 40 percent of our food supply ends up in landfills. The level of food insecurity (defined by the USDA as not always having “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life”) is on the rise from 13.5% across the country. People often go on their phones, doom scrolling and watching TV as forms of escapism from the many problems in the world. However, society cannot turn a blind eye to the issues facing many or else they will only worsen. Thankfully, there are many organizations that work to help fight hunger and divert food from landfills, including Feed Louisville. Feed Louisville is a nonprofit organization that wishes to utilize quality food that would otherwise rot in a landfill to feed “houseless and food insecure people” in the Louisville area. In Louisville alone, 16% of residents deal with food insecurity, including families and children. There are 10,000 or more unhoused people in Louisville, as well as dozens of families with young children on the streets. Although not all food insecure people are unhoused, the problems go hand in hand. Additionally, 29% of solid waste in Jefferson County is food, much of which is thrown away because of over-purchasing or slight defects. Feed Louisville aims to solve both of these problems in one, and over the past five years has established itself as a unique organization set on creating positive change.

Serendipitous Beginnings 

Rhona Bowles Kamar, the executive director and founder of Feed Louisville, began the organization from an “innocent conversation that might have never taken place.” She recalled the time during her catering business in March 2020, when a previous customer came in and said he volunteered with the houseless community after work. He would go out to camps in teh street taking granola bars, water, whatever he could. The pandemic had resulted in coup kitchens to close due to volunteers staying home and quarantine. Rhona asked how she could help and he said he needed hot meals. She wasted no time in calling up her friends and said, “‘Do you want to cook with me? Let’s cook for this guy for a couple weeks.’ We literally thought it would be a two week thing.” They cooked hot meals and then began engaging with local restaurants like Ramsi’s Cafe, cooking a couple hundred meals a day. After two months they had 16 restaurant partners. They would prepare the meals and Rhona and her friends would pick them up, delivering them to people on the street. Initially, they had to raise money to cover the cost of paying for all these delicious meals. The community responded. “Restaurants and bakers and farmers, and all these people donating food… chefs and cooks in the kitchen, people at night making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…” They realized they began filling a niche in the community by taking resources directly to people in camps. Over the next five years they began shifting from making all meals from scratch to rescuing food. They found lots of incoming resources was food that would have been trashed, so they expanded on the “rescue model” by sourcing food that was overproduced or over purchased to repurpose into meals for those who need it. “Then we realized ‘wow, there’s a really strong intersection here between food rescue and hunger relief…That’s how we very accidentally started a non profit!”

Finding Community 

Community is central for Feed Louisville. Feed Louisville operates by partnering with local restaurants, businesses, nonprofits and charities, farmers, and even grocery stores like Kroger to save waste and feed the community. Additionally, corporate volunteers have also partnered, such as Warby Parker and Humana, providing volunteers for events and raising money. As Louisville is the #1 Foodie City in the United States, there is no shortage of food to go around and countless restaurants to partner with. This unique approach is economical and sustainable, with few other nonprofits using this approach. Feed Louisville partners with other nonprofits to direct the meals they make out to houseless and food insecure people in the area, such as Sister Visitor center, Forgotten Louisville, Hope Village, and many others. Maurice at Hope Village said, “The food that they[Feed Louisville] provides for us not only feeds this community that lives here at the Hope Village, [but also] the people surrounding us not in the village… they’ll come around dinner time and… ask us for something to eat… if it wasn’t for [Feed Louisville], it would be very difficult to keep this place open with the residents we have in and provide food.” 

Feed Louisville is “predominantly community funded” through their amazing community of individual donors, support through community events, Venmo donations, recurring donors, foundations that provide grant money, and volunteer groups. They enjoy participating in community events, such as Give for Good Louisville. The organization brings in chefs who get to be creative with the daily menus they create based on what is available, driven by a passion to not waste anything donated. “There are a lot of people in our community that don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and there is a lot of really good food in this community that goes to waste,” Rhona says, “we have built the infrastructure to bring those two things together and to make sure that people get the food resources they need. It’s a model that works. 

Feeding the Future

Feed Louisville has grown substantially over the years, and in 2023 moved into a much larger space that allowed them to take in “234,000 pounds of food donations” (Feed Louisville). However, they are still making 70% of their ready-to-eat meals themselves. This causes the cost of feeding people to increase substantially and requires more volunteers to prepare food. Feed Louisville has set a goal to reduce that statistic to 50% by next year, doubling the hours of volunteer time, and partnering with more homeless shelters, outreach programs, and food resources. To accomplish this, they need financial sustainability. “We want to grow our partnerships. The only way we are going to grow is by serving more people to have impact.” Rhona says. She continues by saying that to grow their outreach, they simply need more donations. This support can come from the community, foundations, city government, and restaurant partners. She explains that their mission of making meals and redistributing food from landfills and into hungry mouths is a full time job, but there is another side to sustain their work. “Our work is to feed people, but we have another burden to fund the work.” If you or anyone you might know is interested in helping Feed Louisville, whether it is a small donation or spending a few hours chopping or peeling in their expansive kitchen, you can visit their website: www.feedlouisville.org, contact Rhona directly: rhona@feedlouisville.org. All money earned goes back to the city of Louisville to combat hunger and food waste. These problems can seem imposing, impossible to solve. However, if communities come together for a common purpose they can achieve great things. As Maurice from Hope Village says, “Everybody deserves community”, and Louisville  cannot let the disadvantaged go unnoticed. Louisville is a tight-knit community and together, with the help of organizations like Feed Louisville, can eradicate food insecurity and food waste.

Citations

Center for Biological Diversity. (2014). Food Waste is Trashing the Planet. Take Extinction off Your Plate. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/takeextinctionoffyourplate/waste/index.html

Feed Louisville. (2024). Feed Louisville. https://www.feedlouisville.org/#/

Greater Louisville Project. (n.d.). Food Insecurity. Greater Louisville Project. Retrieved September 11, 2024, from https://greaterlouisvilleproject.org/factors/food-insecurity/#:~:text=Louisville%20currently%20ranks%205th%20among

Kamar, R. (2024, September 20). Questions about Feed Louisville (E. Green, Interviewer) [Personal communication].

Kentucky Harvest – Moving To Eliminate Hunger. (2023). Kyharvest.org. https://kyharvest.org/#:~:text=A%20recent%20Louisville%20Solid%20Waste

Maurice. (2024, September 20). Feed Louisville partner Hope Village Questions (E. Green, Interviewer) [Personal communication].

USDA. (n.d.). Food Waste FAQs. Usda.gov; USDA. Retrieved September 12, 2024, from https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

USDA ERS - Key Statistics & Graphics. (n.d.). Ers.usda.gov. https://ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/