So many doors, businesses, and communities are closed and we are all feeling the impact and the collective suffering. And yet. We at the Nashville Food Project and within the Growing Together community have no choice but to use this as an opportunity to imagine, envision, and create new doors, new opportunities, and new pathways forward. We will continue on with our vision of community food security, where everyone has access to the food they want and need.
Learning New Ways to Share
We talk a lot about the sharing at The Nashville Food Project. Many times that looks like fresh produce or local proteins generously shared by farmers or grocers that our team transforms into nourishing meals to be shared with our community. Other times sharing is the donated labor of our beloved volunteers who give us their time and talents to help us prep ingredients and cook meals. But in a recent turn of events in these unprecedented times, sharing also has involved wheels.
#CommunityCooking: The Nashville Food Project Recipe Series
The Nashville Food Project Care Package for Uncertain Times (Part 1)
We collected our inspirations, recommendations, motivations—all salve for the loneliness and fears this virus and social distancing can produce. These recommendations aren’t necessarily heavy or directly related to the pandemic or our work. Rather it's a collection intended to nourish and accompany our community as we all stay home together.
When the Helpers Need our Help
Our restaurant friends have shown up for us in extraordinary ways over the years with their skilled hands, big hearts, expert knowledge, creativity and efficient work. They’ve taught us through action about service and heaped generosity upon us helping raise thousands to fund our twin goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in our beloved city Nashville. They’ve had our backs—and thus, the backs of so many across this city. They’ve shown us all hospitality and provided space for building community at their welcome tables. And now our restaurant friends need us.
Sharing Hope
The blows our Middle Tennessee neighbors have endured since the beginning of March have been enormous. Our local community is entering into this pandemic already tired, afraid, economically strapped, and needing each other’s physical presence more than ever. The calls for social distancing are in direct conflict with our mission “to bring people together,” but our staff are soldiering on to nourish our community in these changing times with our actions, inaction, love, and prayers.
COVID-19 Response
What a whirlwind, and what a hard couple of weeks for our community. After coming together as a city to respond to the devastation left by the tornadoes only ten days ago, we are now grappling with what it looks like to support one another when we are advised to no longer physically gather together. The warning is in direct conflict with our mission “to bring people together,” but in a time of so much unknown, we are taking both the needs of our community and the health and safety of our staff and program participants very seriously.
March 2020 Emergency Response
What a hard, sad, mixed-up time for our city. My heart breaks for so many in our community whose homes, neighborhoods, and favorite local places were devastated in the tornadoes this week. And yet... I swell with pride when I witness the ways neighbors are showing up for one another. Life often delivers both beauty and chaos together.