Community Partner Highlight: Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf

photo credit: Ben Sarle

Starting this month, we’ll be sharing with you our cooperative partnerships with community organizations. This month, we’d love to reintroduce you to the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. The Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf strives to serve our community by feeding people and cultivating opportunities. Strong community partnerships allow the Food Shelf to directly provide 11,000 people each year with their basic needs.

The Food Shelf offers an array of opportunities for our community, including their Community Kitchen Academy. This culinary job training program trains about a dozen students in each 14-week session and teaches skills necessary to secure jobs in the food industry. In addition to job training, the Academy also rescues produce, meat, and other foods that would be wasted from local restaurants, farms, and food service companies. Students work with instructors to use this food to create meals that are then shared through the Soup Kitchen and the Food Shelf.

The Co-op works with the Food Shelf in a variety of ways throughout the year:

• Co-op Members volunteer at the Food Shelf and receive discounts at the Co-op through our Member Worker program,
• the Co-op donates gleaned food,
• the Co-op supports the Food Shelf financially and also places money on account here at the store so that the Food Shelf can order through our wholesale distributors, and
• customers donate at the registers every day and donate food in the exit way box (customers can also drop off fresh produce and healthy foods directly at the Food Shelf).

For info, donation hours, or to discover volunteering opportunities, please visit the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf online at http://www.feedingchittenden.org.