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With your support, since 2020, Feed Durham has fed more than 225,000 neighbors in need. In 2025, to help neighbors sustain themselves and one another during these uncertain times, we began installing mutual aid ecosystems in working class neighborhoods. These ecosystems are anchored by at least one community garden, flanked by family gardens; a nearby fridge located at a store, home or organization where the proprietors are in active relationship with the people who pass through; local businesses and households to stock the fridge and pantry. Where possible, we install take-one/leave-one panties and Little Libraries for both children and adults.
While setting up these mutual aid ecosystems, we continue to move 400,000+ pounds of food every year through partnerships with Happy Dirt organics, local farms and other food distributors.
We are building out infrastructure to position our households and neighborhoods to operate with the dignity, confidence and autonomy that our aunties and uncles who came before us were able to operate during uncertain times.
THESE ARE INDEED UNCERTAIN TIMES.
Please support Feed Durham's work by donating today and/or volunteering as well as by sharing our fundraising/volunteer asks with friends/colleagues. Both short-term and long-term, Feed Durham needs volunteers who will make a weekly commitment to water, weed and harvest community gardens in their neighborhoods. If you are willing to host a garden, can recommend sites for future garden installation, or grow more food in your family garden to share with neighbors, please email Feed Durham at FeedDurhamNC-at-gmail-dot-com
REDEFINING WELFARE
As tax-paying citizens, we supplement the income of our poorest neighbors because their low-wage work at grocery stores and in other sectors keeps our daily spending costs low. Additionally, many hospital workers and military families rely on foodbanks, SNAP/EBT, and WIC to feed their families while the titans of their respective industries enrich themselves.
REDEFINING COMMUNITY SAFETY
Most crimes that occur in low-income communities are survival crimes, born out of scarcity and the fear that scarcity breeds. More than guns, more than surveillance cameras and security systems, your best defense against a break-in is feeding and getting to know your neighbors. Bear in mind, most rural communities cannot afford a police force. Yet, crime is low because they feed one another and prioritize knowing and helping one another.
ABOUT FEED DURHAM
Feed Durham is a scrappy mutual aid collective that came together in response to mounting hunger in the Durham area, due to COVID. Since 2020, we've fed 225,000 neighbors in need through our sprawling no-contact cookouts, where we lovingly prepare meals for 500 people per day, and offer grocery give-aways. Through dozens of community partnerships, we feed 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. Most of our volunteers are community organizers, teachers, artists, farmers, parents, and every day goodhearted people. We are a multi-faith, multi-racial, intergenerational collective. We believe that we are only as safe as our least hungry neighbor. We serve more than just food. We serve hope.
FOLLOW FEED DURHAM
instagram.com/feeddurhamnc
facebook.com/feeddurhamnc
MEDIA/POSTS
Standing in the Gaps with Feed Durham
CIVIL EATS
Photos + Words by Katina Parker