Throughout the rest of the year, we’ll be publishing our Best of the Bay 2020 Editors’ Picks, highlighting some of the tremendous people, places, and things that made the Bay Area shine during one heck of a year. See our Best of the Bay 2020 Readers Poll winners and our Readers Stories of Resilience here.
Since launching at the end of March, the nonprofit food relief organization SF New Deal has made several stunning accomplishments. Crucially, SF New Deal has so far delivered more than a million free meals to San Franciscans via three community feeding programs, and supports 115 small food businesses by paying them $10 for each meal they make — to the tune of more than $10 million to date.
The work of offering and delivering these meals will continue into the future. But SF New Deal also has broader goals of helping to improve overall access to food in San Francisco as even more of the city’s residents have become food insecure — from one in four to just one in three in the wake of the pandemic. The organization is now part of the Department of Public Health’s Food Security Task Force, which has made policy recommendations on issues including racial equity, eliminating food deserts and increasing resources for the disabled.
“We can advance the dignity of everyone in our community and come out of this crisis stronger, more resilient, and actualizing solutions that establish better systems for collective care,” wrote SF New Deal community organizer and founding member Vinny Eng on their website.
SF New Deal was conceived as a temporary relief organization, but is now growing impressive roots and seeding hope for long term solutions. —Tamara Palmer
