Denver Community Fridge program expands amid pandemic
By JOHN WENZELJanuary 16, 2021 GMT
Jim Norris is loving the Denver Community Fridge program despite having reservations at the start.
“Any trepidation I had about (negative) neighborhood reactions or people abusing it are gone,” he said recently on the one-month anniversary of the fridge’s debut outside his store at Ellsworth Street and South Broadway. “In fact, I’m surprised at how it’s taken off.”
When 24-year-old Eli Zain, founder of Denver Community Fridge, emailed Norris months ago about hosting the fridge, Norris immediately said “yes.” The idea of stocking fresh, donated food for food-insecure residents and unhoused people was something he was already working on thanks to Mar Williams’ Squash the System, a donation cart offering free, fresh vegetables. (Now, in the winter months, it’s a canned-food program.)
Fridges of free food set up to help address food insecurity in Denver By KUSA staff | January 12, 2021 at 10:51 AM EST - Updated January 12 at 11:17 AM
DENVER (KUSA/CNN) - An effort to keep people fed during the pandemic is picking up steam.
A fridge full of free food is helping those in need and giving people a chance to show how much they care.
It’s been a busy couple of months for Eli Zain, the founder of the Denver Community Fridge Project.
Zain moved to Colorado just last year, but it didn’t take long for the 24-year-old to see there was a lot of need in Denver.
The effort to make free food widely available through self-serve refrigerators around Denver is catching on. One of the groups at the forefront, Denver Community Fridge, unveiled its fourth outdoor fridge on January 10 at Amethyst Coffee, 4999 West 44th Avenue. Several other organizations, including the Little Free Pantry and Little Big Fridge, are also part of the movement. If you give people a chance to care for one another, they will, says Eli Zain, who helped create Denver Community Fridges last summer along with a team from the University of Colorado Denver s Women and Gender Center.
Community fridges operate on the premise of mutual aid: Those who have the means stock food and toiletries, and those who are experiencing food or financial insecurity take what they need. The grassroots exchange allows people to care for their neighbors, and has especially resonated during the pandemic.