The Latest Stories
It’s National Volunteer Appreciation Week, and we’re celebrating the incredible folks who show up daily to chop veggies, shovel compost, mix dressings, and even sharpen knives! These simple, sometimes un-glamorous tasks are the backbone of the Food Project — but the community members that lend their hands to this work each day are the heart.
FiftyForward is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting adults aged 50 and older in Middle Tennessee through a variety of programs and services aimed at promoting health, well-being, and community engagement. Their programming is extensive, but is ultimately focused on developing community and purpose. Currently, The Nashville Food Project delivers about 560 meals each week to support this focus.
Thanks to our friends at Tito’s Vodka, we now have a greenhouse on the Growing Together farm! Before the project last October, Growing Together was near its production capacity due to limitations in the site’s agricultural infrastructure. Farmers weren’t getting much exposure to starting plants from seed in a greenhouse — the greenhouse available to them was a shared space over 10 miles away from the farm.
On February 22, FeedBack Nashville hosted a day-long Food System Forum at Green Door Gourmet, a 350-acre organic farm on the outskirts of Nashville. The event brought together 25 individuals working in our city’s food system.
This week, MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving announced The Nashville Food Project as one of its Open Call awardees working with people and in places experiencing the greatest need in the U.S.. The Nashville Food Project received $1 million.
Butternut squash mac and cheese has become something of a staple around here. This time of year especially, our kitchen is overflowing with squash donations from local farms, and this is one of our favorite ways to use it...
Changing our current food system into this better food future is not a simple task. It is a long-term, relational process that requires all of us—from nonprofits and corporations, to public offices and individuals—to share our experiences and perspectives with one another and work together to identify and co-create many different transformational actions.
This year, we celebrated Welcoming Week by hosting two community events: a fall festival at the farm and a community conversation at our headquarters. We celebrated the diversity of our city, dreamt up ways to make new residents of Nashville feel welcome here, and as always, marveled at the power of food to bring people together.
A beloved long-time kitchen volunteer, Meryl, shares about the journey that led her to The Nashville Food Project and the ways that she leverages her skills and passions to cultivate community and alleviate hunger in our city.
Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Samaria serves lunch to the J. Henry Hale neighborhood out of her front window. It began during the COVID-19 pandemic when schools shut down, leaving children who relied on schools’ daily breakfasts and lunches without food. As 2020 trudged on, Samaria continued to spread much-needed joy and food throughout her community, becoming known throughout her neighborhood as Window of Love.
Amy and Denise met each other when they were dropping their kids off to kindergarten at a local Nashville elementary school. They clicked, and for the past 20 years have been pretty much inseparable friends. They go on family vacations together, do lunch together, and volunteer at St. Luke’s Kitchen as a Cook Team.
Mary Susan is one of those people that light up a room as soon as they step in. With an incredibly witty and fun sense of humor, storytelling that you could listen to for hours, and a laugh that feels like a warm hug, Mary Susan is an integral part of our community.
Can you imagine 27,000 pounds of produce? Now picture that being grown by the patient hands of just four families on less than a single acre of land. This is the work of Growing Together, an urban farm in southeast Nashville jointly stewarded by immigrant and refugee farmers and The Nashville Food Project.
Bianca Morton was in culinary school, watching an instructor whisk together milk and flour to make béchamel sauce, when it dawned on her: she had watched her mother make the same thing her whole life. It was just mac and cheese sauce.
As soon as Leslie steps foot in the kitchen, she is ready to help. She has been volunteering at The Nashville Food Project since 2014, and has since become an integral member of both the tight-knit community in our satellite kitchen at St. Luke’s Community House as well as our lively headquarters kitchen.
We often say that many hearts and hands go into this work. But what exactly do we mean by that? Follow us while we make a beef lasagna to find out!
It’s not only the ingredients in a meal that make a food feel like home — it’s also the way we prepare it. Meals Volunteer Coordinator Arianna reflects on her experience cooking with a special visitor in the Food Project kitchen.
Nashville Launch Pad operates out of spaces across town to create a network of temporary, safer, street-free sleeping shelters for unhoused young adults which are open and affirming to LGBTQ+ individuals and their allies. They currently do this in three ways: through an emergency shelter program, a mobile housing navigation center, and an independent-supported living program.