Feed Durham - A Community Love Project

**Please note: It costs us roughly $2/meal to feed our neighbors. This GoFundMe was launched April 2020. The money you see raised here is spread out over the last 3 years, covering 12 cookouts, where we feed 500 people per day, and multiple grocery giveaways. Rather than taking on the tedious task of launching a new GoFundMe each time we need to raise money, we post here, hoping that donors, old and new, will support our commitment to keeping vulnerable citizens fed, hopeful, and civically-engaged. During our first three years, your generosity helped us feed 155,000+ people. Your continued support will help us feed many hundred thousands more. Let's go!!!**

4TH ANNUAL THANKSGIVING GROCERY GIVEAWAY: NOV. 15-20, 2023

Join Feed Durham for our 4th Thanksgiving Grocery Giveaway (Nov. 15-20). Nov. 15-17, we need help picking up food from local restaurants and stores. Nov. 17-19, we'll pack several hundred bags of groceries with poultry, red potatoes, carrots, collards, onions, celery, sweet potatoes, bread, eggs, apples, and a host of spices. We also include hand-written Love Notes from community members plus non-partisan print materials about issues that improve the health and well-being of our communities. We'll need folks to deliver groceries and to table with us on Sunday, Nov. 19, at POP Swap, where folks can pick up Thanksgiving produce.

Can you help pack groceries? Write Love Notes to go in the bags? Donate shelf-stable items or produce to go in bags? Volunteer remotely?

To volunteer or donate the requested materials/supplies email feeddurhamnc-at-gmail-dot-com

DONATE

CashApp: $BullCityEats

GoFundMe: www.gofundme.com/feeddurhamnc

Monthly Pledge: www.patreon.com/feeddurhamnc

Tax Deductible: https://tinyurl.com/5b2snaxp

FOLLOW FEED DURHAM

Instagram || Facebook || Twitter || LinkedIn || Patreon

 

RECENT MEDIA: GRAVY (PUBLISHED BY SOUTHERN FOODWAYS)

Nourish and Flourish: From Cookouts to Raised Beds, Feed Durham NC Works to End Hunger

Words by Katina Parker | Photos by Katina Parker | Jasmine Celosia

STAY TUNED: UPCOMING ANNOUNCEMENTS

JOIN FEED DURHAM'S NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICE CORPS INITIATIVE

Are you interested in growing food for neighbors in need? Hosting a plant stand? Diverting household goods from landfill by working with your neighbors to clean, repair and donate them? Teaching vital skills like sewing, basic home repair, gardening, community organizing, cooking, plant medicine, etc.? Would you like to learn any of these things?

We know that more disruptions to the supply chain are coming. We must band together; we must work through our differences; we must deepen our relationships with one another in order to keep our communities safe and well.

 

Food Durham NC is currently launching pilot programs for our Neighborhood Service Corps Initiative, which will:

•Grow food for families in need;

• Teach practical skillsets like construction/gardening/cooking to volunteers and families in need;

• Install raised garden beds for families/communities in need;

• Help you redirect household excesses from landfill to folks who actually need what you aren't using and haven't used in months/years and aren't ever going to use but you've had a hard time letting go.

Sign up to join our NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICE CORPS INITIATIVE.

 

In 2023, we will release "Lovingly Prepared by," a reality series about our first year of orchestrating. In addition to being masterful community organizers, some of us are bonafide characters - prepare yourselves to experience delight and wonder.

 

We continue to send farmer surpluses to shelters, elder/disabled communities, missions, and food banks. We're supporting local families in need by buying groceries on their behalf. And we're offering stipends to a few of our volunteers who lost work due to COVID.

WAYS TO HELP

• Volunteer (In-Person or Virtual). For details, message us at feeddurhamnc-at-gmail-dot-com.

• Donate. Any size contribution helps, along with donating multiple times, as it makes sense for your household, helps.

• Repost our GoFundMe, Report Backs, news stories, and photos. Please offer a few words about why you support the work of Feed Durham along with a link to the GoFundMe - especially when posting Report Backs, news, or photos - just in case people don't have time to read the full post.

• Amplify. Share our work and our asks with your networks - family, friends, social justice, civic, sorority/fraternity, athletic, hobbyist, religious, professional, and neighborhood groups. 

• Network us with surpluses and available resources - fresh produce; humanely raised meats; gift cards; skilled labor (especially cooking, landscaping, and building); funding opportunities; gently used clothes, sleeping bags, and blankets washed in dye-free, perfume-free detergent; and, most of all, GREAT PEOPLE.

ABOUT FEED DURHAM

Every 6 to 8 weeks, Feed Durham NC gathers to cook tasty, nutritious meals for 1,500 neighbors in need.

 

Founded by Filmmaker Katina Parker, Feed Durham NC is a scrappy mutual aid collective that came together in answer to mounting hunger in the Durham area due to COVID. Since April 2020, we've fed 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. This Fall, we’re launching a pilot program of our 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 unused belongings; and share skillsets like basic home repair, outdoor cooking, gardening, land acknowledgment, community organizing, planetary stewardship, etc.

A Meal With a Side of Hope 

Wake Forest magazine || Story by Carol Hanner (December 2020)

Filmmaker Katina Parker Feeds Multitudes During the Pandemic 

IndyWeek.com || Story by Sarah Edwards (July 2020)

Safety Looks Like Full Bellies in a Pandemic 

Scalawag || Story by Courtney Napier (November 2020)

 

December 2020 Report Back for Feed Durham

Words by Katina Parker, Photos by Courtney Symone Staton, Jasmine Celosia, Katina Parker, Rhonda Klevansk + Tom Simon

 

October 2020 Report Back for Feed Durham 

Words by Katina Parker; Photos by Jasmine Celosia + Katina Parker

photo by erin bell

FEED DURHAM VALUES

Every few weeks, we have the distinct honor of cooking for folks who need a tasty meal and a pick-me-up, connecting surplus produce from local farms with under-resourced food programs, and deepening our relationships with one another as we go. Most of our volunteers are community organizers, teachers, artists, farmers, protesters, parents, and everyday folks. All gender expressions and sexual orientations are welcome and celebrated here. We believe that Black lives matter. We practice land acknowledgment and have deep reverence for the indigenous people who stewarded the land upon which we live for thousands of years before America became America, and who continue to seek redress for broken treaties that diminish their/our quality of life. We are determined to leave the planet better than we found it.

Set against the backdrop of Katina’s rolling tree-lined acreage, Feed Durham has become an idyllic place for LGBTQ-GNC people to bring all of who they are to serving their local community while learning survival and culinary skillsets from one another. This is a safe place to meet and talk to folks, COVID-tested or quarantined, whom you might not normally befriend, while washing sweet potatoes or beets, or learning to tend fire, or digging a compost trench. 

We believe that we are only as safe, well, and joyful as our least hungry neighbor.

Feed Durham serves more than just food. We serve hope.

photo by katina parker

RECOMMENDED DONOR LEVELS (any donation amount is welcome) 

• $50 - Individual -  6 to 10 meals 

• $80 - Two people - 12 to 20 meals 

• $125 - Two adults + 2 or 3 kids - 30 to 35 meals 

THE FEED DURHAM MENU 

Our menu is finalized the week before we cook, based upon available produce and meat from local farms and grocery stores. Our typical menu includes: 

• smoked drum sticks and thighs 

• smoked hot dogs - chicken or turkey 

• brown beans w/ smoked turkey 

• mashed yams 

• garlic corn 

• savory brown rice 

• grilled seasonal vegetables (eggplant, onions, cabbage, broccoli).

photo by katina parker

2022 :: EXPANSION

In 2022, we'll hire full and part-time staff to focus on programmatic interventions that disrupt food insecurity in our neighborhoods - installing raised garden beds for communities and families that don't have immediate access to fresh produce, food ed for those communities, resourcing folks who are feeding neighbors and unhoused people from their homes, etc. Please stay tuned for what we're cooking up next. Pun intended.

 

"LOVINGLY PREPARED BY" - THE DOCUMENTARY + THE BLUEPRINT

In 2023, Feed Durham NC will release "Lovingly Prepared by," a documentary accompanied by an organizing blueprint, with the hope that other communities will customize what we're doing for their neighborhoods or share information with us about helpful hunger interventions. We've already begun consulting with other communities on no-contact cookouts and have had peers travel in from Richmond and Chicago to study with us while we cook and make plans to disrupt food insecurity in our neighborhoods.

photo by katina parker

FOOD ETHICS + QUALITY 

We are committed to providing organic and/or natural foods - no hormones, antibiotics, cages or pesticides. Most produce and meat are sourced from local farms. All foods are dairy-free, with the exception of butter, which is added to some vegetable dishes. All foods are prepared gluten-free, with the exception of hot dog buns or other bread donations (which are optional and never come into contact with your food at the Cook Site). All foods are nut-free. Coconut oil and soy may be used as ingredients for some foods. None of the food Feed Durham NC prepares comes from a can.

photo by katina Parker

CURRENT COVID PROTOCOL

Hunger is on the rise. COVID spread is on the rise, yet again. We work with folks who are extremely vulnerable and need to insure that our offering of food is COVID-free and meets food cleanliness standards. Even if vaccinated, especially if you plan to prep veggies or cook, all volunteers are asked to get a (free) COVID test at Walgreens on Guess Road in Durham, CVS, your personal care provider, or any of the drive-throughs in Durham/Chapel Hill/Raleigh, 24 to 48 hours before you volunteer. To get a Walgreens or CVS test, you must indicate that you live in an area with COVID spread. When COVID testing demand is high, try to book your appointment at least 5 days ahead of time.

After being tested, quarantine until the end of your final volunteer shift - wear masks in public, limit your time in public spaces like grocery stores or inside homes with family/friends who aren’t quarantining.

If you can guarantee that you have very limited risk of COVID exposure, you don't have to get tested - you live alone or you live with other adults who work from home or in work environments that offer lots of social distancing (ex., outside on a farm).

For those who can’t quarantine or have COVID exposure risk, our available volunteer opportunities include: Street Team Flyer Distro (get those steps in!), fundraising among your circles of influence, Equipment Pick-Up and Return, Writing Love Notes to go out with food, Cookout set-up and breakdown.

 

Every volunteer will have their temperature taken with a temp gun at the beginning of their shift. You will also be asked standard COVID screening questions about any potential exposure.

VOLUNTEER ENVIRONMENT + SAFETY

While we work, we listen to GREAT music. All food is prepped and cooked outside in an open-air environment on an acre of land. Most of the cooking happens on a 20' x 20’ carport and in surrounding areas. We have tents and tarps to protect against rain and sun, spaced at least 10 feet apart. We have patio heaters to help us stay warm. We wear masks and food prep gloves at all times. There are hand-washing stations, which you must use after using the restroom or eating, and before you put on your food prep gloves. There are bottles filled with vinegar water at each of the stations. We disinfect hourly. We lovingly remind one another to change gloves before handling food. If preparing food or handling food containers, volunteers have to change their gloves every time they touch any part of their bodies or clothes, someone else’s body or any object (cell phones, cars, wallets, etc.)

Families and roommates can volunteer together. Children as young as 5 years old can volunteer and must be supervised by a parent or guardian at all times. Feed Durham NC provides cut gloves and other safety devices to prevent injury. We expect all volunteers to take care of themselves by exercising caution, sound judgement, and common sense. Neither Feed Durham NC, Feed Durham Founder and Cook Site Host Katina Parker, or any of your fellow volunteers are responsible for injuries sustained while volunteering - bruises, cuts, sprains, etc.

Due to COVID, volunteers can bring home-cooked meals and drinks to consume while they work, but cannot offer it to other volunteers.

For cold weather cooking, we recommend wearing waterproof boots, wool socks, and lots of layers with sleeves that can be rolled up.

To volunteer email feeddurhamnc-at-gmail.com