Each year, Weaver Street Market takes the interest gained from its endowment, the Cooperative Community Fund, and turns that money into grants for organizations that focus on giving people access to healthy foods.
This year’s recipients were PORCH, a volunteer-based hunger-relief organization, and TABLE, an organization that feeds children at risk of hunger.
With its $2,000 grant, PORCH will launch a new program called PORCH Cooks that will provide families recipes to go along with their food each month, according to co-founder Debbie Horowitz.
“We have been trying to get a nutrition program going for a while now, and this $2,000 grant is the seed money to get it off the ground,” Horowitz said. She said they hope to start adding recipes to the bags they give out starting in October.
Horowitz said PORCH plans to also offer demos and taste tests at its delivery site, so families can see how to exactly prepare each recipe. Unlike the recipes, which will be included in bags monthly, Horowitz said demos will happen every two months.
Horowitz’s fellow PORCH co-founder Susan Romaine said one aspect of the grant she is grateful for is that it will allow PORCH to buy spices to include in its bags.
“You have to make a lot of tough choices about what you can buy, and this tends to be something that’s not as affordable. And so it’s really nice to be able to provide that,” Romaine said.
PORCH currently serves approximately 300 families, which include more than 790 children and 550 adults, according to Horowitz.
The second grant recipient, TABLE, works to not only provide healthy food for children when they do not have access to food at school, but it also works to educate children about the importance of eating healthy and locally.
