Cranberry Outreach: What Can We Do?

As more and more people in our communities are unable to afford healthy food, many faith leaders ask: what can I do to help?

This holiday season, Faith Leaders for Food Justice visited over twenty-five churches in Harlem to deliver homemade cranberry sauce and to invite them to join Faith Leaders for Food Justice. We also delivered the information to over 150 other faith-based communities in Harlem. Faith leaders were given cards with the ideas for how their congregation could get involved.

We will be following up with written information and holding a reception in the early spring for faith communities who are interested in undertaking one or more of these projects.

This holiday season, here are 7 things faith communities can do to fight hunger and increase healthy food options in our communities:

• Support supermarket creation by creating a task force in your faith community


• Support or start a Community Supported Agriculture Project


• Advocate for policies that will improve school meals, fund emergency food programs, workers’ rights, and work towards ending hunger


• Create or support a community garden


• Get involved in food stamps outreach


• Support or start a local food co-op


• Adopt a local food emergency program or become a long-term volunteer

Are you interested in joining Faith Leaders for Food Justice?

Please contact us by email at faithfoodjustice@gmail.com or by phone at (212) 825-0028, ext. 212 (Alexandra) to get involved!

Faith Leaders for Food Justice seeks to provide information and the resources to help faith communities in New York effectively help their communities and to promote change. We began our outreach in Harlem and are focusing our goals on improving access to healthy food for the Harlem community. In particular, our goals are to improve supermarket access, to increase participation in the food stamps program, to involve more faith-based communities in advocacy, and to increase the number of community supported agriculture and urban agriculture projects in Harlem.

Faith Leaders for Food Justice is an interfaith group that is working to help find innovative ways to engage the faith community in food justice issues. Convened by New York Faith and Justice, Alexandra Yannias (Coordinator of Interfaith Voices Against Hunger) coordinates the group which includes members from the following organizations and communities: Cathedral Community Cares, the Church of the Holy Trinity, Faith House Manhattan, Hazon, New York Faith and Justice, New York City Coalition Against Hunger, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and the West Harlem Action Network Against Poverty (WHANAP).