Matt Burke, a 2017 Open Society Institute Community Fellow, started the Baltimore Free Farm Food Rescue as an expansion of the Baltimore Free Farm, an established collective of gardeners and activists who want to provide access to healthy food for everyone.
“There are a lot of people in our communities who are forced to buy over-priced, unhealthy, processed foods from gas stations and take-out restaurants,” Burke said. “Meanwhile, just miles away from any of these neighborhoods there’s a high volume of wasted food.”
Burke decided to establish a network of 12 give-away sites throughout Baltimore that will distribute free nutritious, repurposed food. The model is simple. “By distributing repurposed food to under-served communities, we can avoid putting perfectly good food into landfills to rot,” says Burke.
Here, people gather food at the Dovecote Café giveaway in Reservoir Hill.