Feeding Massachusetts: Community Fridges and Little Free Pantries
Photos by Michael Piazza
There’s a refrigerator on a sidewalk on Park Drive in Boston with a sign that reads, “We are your neighbors, your farmers and most importantly, we are your friends.” Inside the refrigerator is food, free to anyone. There are no rules or limits and no questions asked, just the words, “Take what you need, leave what you can.”
One of several community fridges and little free pantries in the Greater Boston and Worcester area, this fridge provides easy access to food for those who need it and facilitates giving for those who are able. Boston’s first community fridge opened in September 2020. There are now over 10 fridges plus several little free pantries, all run by volunteers, filled by the community and backed by compassion, love and the idea of mutual aid.
“The concept is that anybody can simply walk up and get food or put food in the fridge,” says Karina Gaft-Azcue, one of the organizers behind the Lynn Community Fridge. “There are no bureaucratic loopholes to jump through or paperwork to fill out.”
The pandemic did not create the problem of food insecurity, but it has exacerbated it. As of January 2021, an estimated 1 in 8 individuals and 1 in 5 children in Eastern Massachusetts were food insecure, according to the Greater Boston Food Bank, with Massachusetts seeing the greatest percentage increase (59%) in food insecurity in the country. “
Access to food is a human right,” says Maria Ravelli, organizer for the Worcester Community Fridges, and while these fridges and pantries are only a temporary fix to food insecurity, they’re giving people good food with dignity. “We need to put food in people’s hands ASAP.”
Behind all these fridges and pantries are people, like Ravelli and Gaft-Azcue, with a connection to their community and a passion to help others. While several people were interviewed for this story, each emphasized that they were only one of many organizers and volunteers. COVID created an opportunity for these people to come together to combat food insecurity and food waste through mutual aid.
Each community fridge has its own story of success, including finding a host to supply the electricity (estimated at about $30–50 per month), obtaining the actual fridge, building a pantry for dry goods, shielding the fridge and pantry from the weather and finding an artist to decorate. There have been GoFundMe campaigns, virtual 5Ks and Instagram requests for donations; a couple of groups have received local grants. Fridges have been bought or donated and much of the design and carpentry work has been performed by volunteers.
When Josiel Gonzalez first read about all the community fridges popping up in New York City in July 2020, he thought, “We’ve got to get this started in Boston.” People genuinely want to help people, he says, and with all the people working from home or laid off with extra time on their hands, he thought, “What if we created a social justice opportunity within our own community that’s tangible that people can rally behind?”
He posted a story on Instagram and a mutual friend connected him with Veronica Bettio, a student at Northeastern University. They combined forces, Gonzalez says, with Bettio organizing a group of volunteers who were interested in helping. “We worked with the JP/Roxbury mutual aid group to go through the x’s and o’s and established a community-run initiative that was independent from any organization,” Gonzalez says. His mom gave him a fridge and a local barber offered to host. Food rescue organizations donated food, and the first Boston community fridge opened in Jamaica Plain on September 4.
Jenny Nguyen faced food insecurity while growing up in Roslindale. Because of her knowledge of the Vietnamese language, a friend asked her to help communicate with families who needed food access. “My job was to connect them to different food access resources provided by the city,” she says. “I was amazed at how many families would call me and say that they had been without food for a few days or so.” Nguyen reached out to the JP and Dorchester fridge groups, and they connected her with Laura Cowie- Haskell, a food rescue volunteer for RISE (Roslindale is for Everyone) who was also interested in establishing a Roslindale community fridge. By October, Roslindale’s fridge was up and running.
Michael Zayas started volunteering for the Dorchester Community Fridge two months after it opened in November and was surprised by the number of people who continue showing up at the fridge in desperate situations. He and other volunteers post flyers around the fridge in several languages with information on other resources such as Project Bread and Vietaid.
Many of the Allston-Brighton fridge volunteers have experience in food service and food safety as well as connections to mutual aid efforts in New York. One volunteer has a sister in Queens who set up a minifridge and encouraged her sister to launch a fridge in Boston. The Allston fridge opened in October 2020; the Brighton fridge opened in January 2021.
Nguyen says that there are those who may not be eligible for government-funded programs like SNAP due to immigration status or who may hesitate to sign up because of the stigma associated with food stamps. These fridges can help fill the gap. When people come to the fridge, Zayas says, “No one will judge them or question them or limit the amount of food they take.”
So, where does the food come from? In addition to neighbors dropping off their own bags of food, organizers hold food drives and work with local businesses, food pantries, hospitals and churches to keep the fridges full and to take advantage of food that might otherwise go to waste.
“We know food insecurity is a big deal, but so is food waste,” Gonzalez says, echoing the thoughts of many community fridge organizers. With food in the fridges turning over in 24 to 48 hours, Gonzalez is sure a home can be found in someone’s stomach for food that might otherwise be thrown out. “If it’s not expired and still healthy, we can give it to someone who might need it,” he says.
While some fridges allow homemade meals, most don’t, so if you’re thinking of donating, be sure to check with the individual fridge and note that while none of the fridges will accept alcoholic beverages, leftovers or unlabeled meals, some will accept raw meat or seafood for the freezer section.
“We aren’t too picky about what people drop off, we just ask that people be mindful,” Nguyen says. “If you wouldn’t personally eat it, don’t drop it off in our fridge.”
While the adjacent shelves may be well stocked with dry goods, the fridge itself is often in need of fresh food including eggs, milk, butter, yogurt, fresh produce—like bananas, oranges and apples—and bottled water.
Many who need the food may not have a kitchen in which to cook it, so organizers work with restaurants to fill the fridge with precooked meals as well as working with food wholesalers, bakeries and farms to provide dairy, day-old bread and fresh produce.
Organizers emphasize that herbs, spices, oils and other ingredients help those who have access to kitchens prepare familiar foods and good and healthy meals. “Whatever is in your pantry should be in the [community] pantry, too,” according to Qian Mei, organizer of the Coast Community Fridge in Cambridge.
Volunteers check and clean the fridge, sometimes several times a day, taking photos to share the fridge’s current contents with each other and on social media. Efforts are made to keep the fridges full of food so when the Roslindale fridge was continually emptied one day, despite four large donation drop-offs, Nguyen knew the fridge was working. “We let people take as much as they need,” she says.
The fridge organizers chat weekly via Signal chat, sharing ideas, blueprints and discussing common issues or challenges. “With combined efforts, it’s a lot easier to get things done,” Gonzalez says.
Will these fridges continue after the threat of the pandemic slows down? “I think the need has always been here. I think that COVID made [food insecurity] more clear to us,” Nguyen says.
For those interested in implementing a fridge in their own community, Mei recommends reaching out to an existing fridge group. “We have a lot of resources we can share,” she says.
While community fridges need electricity, little free pantries (aka mini free pantries, shared boxes or blessing boxes) just need a location. These small cabinets, looking almost like a large birdhouse, provide nonperishable food, free for the giving and taking, on city streets and at the end of driveways. A map on littlefreepantry.org shows locations of pantries in Massachusetts, including Marblehead, Medford, Melrose, Princeton, Reading, Saugus, Somerville and East Boston.
After learning about the pantries on YouTube, Deysi Gutierrez of East Boston checked to see if there were any pantries in Boston. Although there were no pantries, there was a little free library located outside Empower East Boston, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower and support the East Boston community. The organization decided to turn the library into a pantry and hired Gutierrez to manage it. Though she has filled the pantry only three times herself since August when it opened, Gutierrez says the pantry is always stocked with food from the neighborhood. “The community has taken ownership of it,” she says.
“Even communities that don’t ‘look’ like there is food insecurity have food insecurity,” according to Holly Walton, who set a little free pantry at the end of her driveway in Princeton. Walton bought a small cabinet, painted it blue and communicated with town officials before filling it with dry goods on Thanksgiving weekend. “Even helping one person is OK with me,” she says.
These little free pantries and community fridges are acts of love—from the people who maintain them to the people who need food within their own community. The volunteers behind the Allston and Brighton community fridges say that neighbors of all ages, including families with very young children, have been happy and eager to both donate and collect food and other essentials from the fridges and adjacent pantries. “We’re neighbors helping neighbors,” they say.
For a list of community fridges and little free pantries, plus addresses and instagram handles, click here.
For an inside look at the implementation of Worcester’s Fridge at the Bridge, watch this 3-part behind-the-scenes short film about the group of volunteers who spearheaded it, produced by Worcester-based documentary filmmaker Fernando Ponce and Sidenote Programs.
This story appeared in the Spring 2021 issue.
