Heartside Gleaning Initiative – February 2019

Heartside Gleaning Initiative empowers residents of the Heartside community to become healthier through increased access to healthy foods and nutrition education. The organization does this by collecting excess produce from farmers’ markets and transporting it to the low-income neighborhood of Heartside and surrounding communities for distribution to individuals, food pantries and free and low-cost meal programs.

With the donation, Heartside Gleaning Initiative plans to hire a part-time gleaning coordinator to increase the number of food pantry partners and distribution locations as well as to pack and deliver fresh food boxes to mobility impaired individuals. The funding will also be used to provide more nutrition, cooking and canning classes.

“We truly believe that everyone should have access to healthy food,” says Lisa Sisson, Chair of Hearthside Gleaning Initiative. “$10,000 will be used to increase our capacity to provide fresh, healthy food for many hundreds of low-income families in Grand Rapids.”

For more information on Heartside Gleaning Initiative, visit www.heartsidegleaning.org.