Food Not Bombs is a grassroots, all-volunteer mutual aid organization that shares food in cities all around the world.

Since 2015, Food Not Bombs Lake County and East Side Cleveland shares about 8,000 - 10,000 pounds of food every month at our weekly food shares (that's over one literal ton of food every week!!) in Willoughby and the St. Clair neighborhood of Cleveland.

We believe that access to food is a human right. Each day in the US, enough food is thrown away to ensure food for everyone, much of it before it ever reaches a grocery store. We recover good, fresh produce from distributors and stores before it can become food waste, as well as fresh bread from local bakeries, and share it - rain, snow, sleet, or shine - at our weekly shares. Any food that we receive that isn't in a condition to share, we are able to compost, literally keeping tons of food out of landfills.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, more people have struggled with food insecurity. This increase in need has corresponded with an increase in the number of families we share food with weekly.

We use a shipping container equipped with solar panels to store food and supplies. In order to better serve our community and reduce food waste, we are upgrading our solar power system, enabling us to add climate control to our storage container. Many fruits and veggies that will stay fresh at room temperature, or a little cooler, just won't survive in the heat of the summer. Being able to control the temperature at which we store food will enable us to be able to share more food and feed more people.

This is a big project! We've already worked out our cooling system and insulation, but we need to upgrade our solar's battery capacity to make this happen. This is where you come in! In order to make this happen, we need to offset some of the costs of upgrading the solar power system by raising funds.

You can help ensure that we're able to keep more food fresh, longer, so it can be distributed to more folks in our community by contributing today.

*** UPDATE 4/2***

Since 2016, we've operated on a shoestring budget, making every dollar we get go as far as possible. This is a huge amount of money to us. We're a dedicated, grassroots team of organizers and volunteers who do this work out of a commitment to justice. We have no one on staff or working professionally for the organization.

It always feels a little weird to ask for money, but we had a need and you all helped us meet that need in just two days. This is the power we see in working class people, working together. We can accomplish anything.

So now what? There's still a couple weeks in our campaign. We just want to assure everyone that any money beyond our $4000 goal will go directly to resources (PPE, fuel, grocery bags, etc.) that will help us share more food with more people.

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