The Berkshire Food Project seeks to alleviate hunger, food insecurity, and social isolation by serving healthy, no cost meals and connecting people to other resources, all in a dignified and respectful manner.
We seek to alleviate need that has grown even in periods of economic expansion nationally. We seek to provide a forum to facilitate unselfconscious interaction among disparate segments of the population. And we seek to provide information helpful to our customers. We invite relevant social service agencies and experts to address lunch gatherings on such varied issues as tenants' rights, voting registration, programs for the elderly, public assistance, child and health care, Social Security, and nutrition. We also seek to share information about food insecurity with our community to foster a greater understanding of the issues in our community and the barriers that can prevent people from accessing resources.
The shift in the northern Berkshires from an industrial to a service economy has rendered hundreds of local residents unemployed, underemployed, or at best, leashed to minimum-wage jobs with neither benefits nor security. In this devastating situation, the inability of a growing segment of our fellow citizens to provide their families with nutritious meals, and the actual incidence of hunger, have become alarming.
In the autumn of 1986, a group of Williams College students, with the support of several local residents and, above all, the encouragement of Rev. Elizabeth Wheeler (then minister of the First Congregational Church of North Adams) decided to create a program to offer regular free lunches in North Adams. The Berkshire Food Project began its operations on a twice-weekly basis in January 1987. Its initial funds came from a "meatless meal" program at Williams College. For each student who was willing to forgo meat once a month, the College Dining Services donated (and still does donate) one dollar to the BFP.
Apart from providing the Project with roughly $600 every month of the school year, this mode of fundraising made students aware of the serious needs of the community around them. And indeed, this linkage between usually unconnected and distant parts of local society was from the very beginning a key objective of the BFP. The BFP Board of Directors has always included a member or members from our dining room, and all Board members are encouraged to support the Project by volunteering at mealtime. All volunteers—as well as visiting business people—are expected to break bread with others in the dining room. This interaction among diners, volunteers, church staff, community residents, and Board members is written prominently into the BFP mission statement. The Project aspires to be a community forum where people of widely different ages and circumstances can meet one another in an atmosphere of friendliness and mutual respect.
The BFP has grown from providing three meals each week in 1987 to now serving five days a week. Our meals are cooked from scratch and often use local ingredients. We make every effort to prepare delicious and nutritious meals; we try to isolate meat to a specific dish in each meal, leaving vegetarian options whenever possible.
In 2018, we served over 35,900 meals, including meals served in our dining room, meals to take home and emergency pantry items. This was a significant increase from 2017.
Some of our food is supplied through in-kind donations from businesses and organizations; shares in the cooperative, organic Caretaker Farm, in Williamstown; and the Western Massachusetts Food Bank. The remainder is purchased from wholesale stores, retail providers and local supermarkets.
We arose in response to dire needs. Nothing would make us happier than to close down the BFP because there was no longer a need for it. Alas, this is not the case. If current indications are any guide, we must expect ours to be an ongoing project.