The Covid-19 crisis has most heavily impacted Black and brown communities on the South and West Sides of Chicago. Our mission has always been to provide the city’s most vulnerable with healthy, healing food, but through the Covid-19 pandemic this work has become more important than ever. Our Fresh Moves team has pivoted from their usual operations to focus on our emergency food relief efforts. We have grown and distributed nutrient-dense produce as well as coordinated and delivered culturally-affirming meals to communities most in need. Between these produce boxes and prepared meals, over one million pounds of food has been donated.

We’re incredibly grateful for all of the funders that have supported our Squad approach, which employs on-the-ground collaborations (“Squads”). These Squads directly support BIPOC-led organizations and allow them to safely grow, process, prepare, and distribute high quality, nutritious meals and produce boxes to folks in need. Unlike other Covid-19 relief efforts, our Squad approach meets the immediate needs of communities while also creating opportunities for these organizations to expand their operations. By supporting these BIPOC-led businesses, we can not only provide emergency food to Black and brown communities during the Covid-19 pandemic, but we can continue to work towards building a more equitable Chicago food system.

UGC proudly partners with food businesses that are Black-, Indigenous-, or People-of-Color-operated to provide folks in need with culturally-affirming and nutritious meals. These meals are especially important in providing food to those who are not able to prepare food due to housing status, culinary skill, or time constraints. Our prepared meal partners are:

To supplement produce from UGC farms, we’ve also partnered with Midwest Foods, a woman-owned and family-run produce distributor located in the Brighton Park neighborhood in Chicago. We are proud to play our part in supporting American agriculture as an essential part of the food supply chain.

UGC initially started with outreach to the organizations we partner with for our Fresh Moves Mobile Market pop up farmers’ markets. These organizations include health centers, schools, senior centers, and other social service agencies. Our partners collected information from the people they served to identify individuals and households most at need. Many of the people identified fall into demographics that are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19, including those who have disabilities, are immunocompromised, experience homelessness or are unstably housed, are homebound, aging adults, undocumented individuals, people who have had contact with the justice system, and domestic violence survivors.

As our Fresh Moves team transitioned into emergency food distribution, our produce donations have been distributed weekly to over 2000 residents at our partner sites, including:

• Thresholds South
• Thresholds Rowan Trees
• Howard Brown Health
• Near North Health
• Martin Luther King Center
• Claretian Associates
• Heartland Alliance
• Pride ROC

• UofC Medicine C4P
• Stone Temple Missionary Baptist Church
• New Life Covenant Church Southeast
• The Scentuary
• American Indian Center
• Academy for Global Citizenship
• READI Chicago
• Boxville

• Hope House
• Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation
• Eden’s Place
• African American Women Construction Trades
• Institiuo Del Progresso Latino
• Academy for Global Citizenship
• Claretian Associates