These Colorado Programs Are Combating Hunger with Nutritious Free Meals
To help the nearly 40 percent of Coloradans who are food insecure, Kitchen One for One and Project Worthmore aim to serve healthy food and spur community connection. Jenny McCoy •
March 11, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic may be easing, but the hunger crisis it exacerbated in Colorado is far from over. Nearly two in five Centennial Staters (38 percent) don’t have reliable access to nutritious food, according to a December survey by Hunger Free Colorado. That’s up from 29 percent in September 2020 and 10.2 percent in 2019 a sign of the profound and worsening economic challenges many are facing a full year into the pandemic.
Chris Kilcullen and Mark Sunderhuse founded the nonprofit food truck Kitchen One for One to create a connection point to pass on sustenance both as food and as goodwill. The three-year-old endeavor recently started a new program called Taco Nights as a way for people to enjoy meals while helping give food to those in need. “We wanted to go out and love people,” Kilcullen says. “We wanted to do it in a way that was non-threatening, meeting people right where they are no pretension, no requirements.”
Taco Nights work like this: Kitchen One for One volunteers set up the taco truck to sell meals to those who can afford to pay, and then Kilcullen and Sunderhuse use those funds to provide tacos to community members struggling with food insecurity. The new program is an adaptation of their old food truck model that caters specifically to the safety and social distancing realities of COVID-19 while also responding to increased demand. Their first Taco Night in Denver is Thursday,