How to Start a Community Fridge
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Change Food’s “How to Start a Community Fridge” is a free, step-by-step manual for anyone interested in launching and maintaining a community fridge. Inspired by author Diane Hatz’s efforts and experience co-founding and running the East Village Neighbors Fridge in New York City, the guide offers common sense instruction on how to get a fridge up and running in any neighborhood.
The pandemic has brought untold pain and suffering to so many people around the world, and has shed light on the critical situation with food insecurity and hunger here in the United States. From the overwhelming number of people struggling to find enough food to eat has come a growing movement of mutual aid and community building, all focused around a fridge.
What is a community fridge? Simply put, it’s a refrigerator left in public for the community to leave food for others and for neighbors to take food that they need. “Take what you need; leave what you can” is the movement’s motto.
There’s no official count yet of these fridges, but they number in the many hundreds, if not thousands. And they’re not only feeding neighbors; they’re also building community and helping strengthen bonds within neighborhoods all over the country and world. They’re taking neighborhoods and turning them into connected communities.
