Food support for Waterbury families

For 2021, Waterbury Mutual Aid is focused exclusively on projects that combat food insecurity in Waterbury and across the state

Food Support Network

WMA’s Food Support Network–our original project–brings fresh, healthy food right to people’s homes. Since April 2020, WMA has made over 2,500 deliveries to Waterbury families.

Our grocery bags are filled with fresh produce and core staple foods. We buy almost no branded food and deliver no empty calories.

WMA always needs drivers to make COVID-safe, no-contact deliveries. As needed, drivers can receive a cash stipend. Please send an email to ask about volunteering.

Pods: a bulk food support project

WMA provides bulk food support to Waterbury’s most vulnerable communities. Because these communities cannot access the traditional support systems, these deliveries often represent the only food support these communities receive.

A ‘pod’ is a group of 5 families, and our bulk delivery project regularly support 8 pods or 40 families in total. When extra food is available, WMA supports as many as 35 additional families.

This 48′ climate-controlled trailer lets us store food safely, giving us and our partners time to plan distributions.

Regional hub for grassroot orgs

To help ourselves and other small groups access the USDA’s now-defunct Farmers to Families program, Waterbury Mutual Aid acquired large-scale cold storage, which let us collect F2F boxes whenever and wherever we could. We stored the boxes and redistributed them to other small groups aligned with our work.

Even though the F2F program has ended, WMA can occasionally access similar types of mass food support. Whenever we can, we provide the same kind of storage and redistribution support to our comrades.

Community garden

Waterbury Mutual Aid, with the support of Justice Southbury/Justice Woodbury, has installed at Long Hill Bible Church a community garden with 20 raised beds roughly 3 feet square. We built this garden for use by residents of the surrounding neighborhood, which includes the Davis Gardens housing complex.

In development

Buyers club

Later this year, we hope to announce a cooperative buyers club based on the pods bulk food support project. If successful, this project would allow groups of families to buy large amounts of core staple foods at or below wholesale prices.