Food Not Bombs, Long Island, is an entirely volunteer-based organization that has brought free plant-based meals, groceries, and clothing to those in need for over 14 years.
In the last five years the group has seen exponential growth in the number of volunteers, amount of donations, sponsors, as well as in the community participation at the food shares -- all without any operating budget.
Following a mantra of "solidarity, not charity," Food Not Bombs community food shares feed hundreds of families vegan meals and groceries each week in 5 cities across suburban Long Island.
Food Not Bombs DIY ethos and decentralized structure is what has allowed it to flourish and spread its feedings to countries all around the world. Maintaining these ideals, autonomy and purely volunteer framework is what will assure it's continued success and continued growth within the community.
It is for these reasons that Food Not Bombs volunteers have started a partner nonprofit with the purpose of increasing access to recovered food, increasing distribution of food to communities in need, and for the purpose of coaching existing soup kitchens and pantries to more efficiently serve the community, even while operating on a shoestring budget.
This new partner nonprofit, properly named Community Solidarity, can use your help.
They have been nominated to the Vivint Gives Back Project, a socially-driven nonprofit incubator, and if they receive enough endorsements from people like you, they can earn one of a handful of grants for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Food Not Bombs is asking all of their supporters to endorse the Community Solidarity project by casting your vote for them. You can continue to help them by sharing the endorsement link with your friends on social networks. You can return back to the Vivint link to vote once a day until the drawing in August.
It is a sobering fact to learn that poverty and a lack of access to food and water kills more people every day then violent conflicts do. A fact that we so often ignore is that the blight of scarcity, poverty, and hunger are things we can do something about it.
Food Not Bombs and Vivint Gives Back are showing us that DIY hunger relief and community empowerment are more then just bright-eyed ideals -- they are an ever-growing concrete reality.