When Gabriela Venegas-Ramirez ’26 saw the Providence chapter provide free meals at Kennedy Plaza for the first time, she began working with them.
“I would go to dining halls and just stock up on fruits and take loaves of bread and just cart them to Kennedy Plaza every Sunday,” she said.
Since 1980, the Food Not Bombs movement has spread internationally, forming independent chapters throughout cities across the country. The organization is an anti-war group dedicated to redistributing food and resources locally. After Venegas-Ramirez’s experience in spring 2023, she and others worked to get Student Activities Office approval for a Brown chapter and recruit as many students as possible.
“And our numbers grew. Like overnight,” she said. “We had like 80 members, and we finally got the SAO recognition.”
The Brown chapter soon began working in tandem with the Providence chapter, providing support and donations for the Sunday meal services at Kennedy Plaza. Club members encourage community members to donate excess food and clothing at Faunce Arch on Sundays at 1:45 p.m., emphasizing that they will distribute it on behalf of the donor.
Henry Robbins ’26 has worked with the club for over a year now.
“Every Sunday, the Providence chapter has a food serve from 2-4, and we, as the Brown sect of that, try to find opportunities in which we can glean food from Brown campus and help redistribute that to the Providence chapter in order to give to people who are in need,” Robbins said.
Now, the club is reaching out to local businesses in an attempt to gather more resources for redistribution.
“That’s a huge initiative this semester, reaching out on campus, like departments and other students clubs, as well as off-campus organizations, like One Cafe on Federal Hill,” he said.
The club is also working with White Electric cafe, Robbins said. “We pick up all of their unsold produce and take it to Kennedy Plaza and redistribute it.”
“The premise is that there’s so much food waste,” he said, “and how can there be so much food waste while at the same time, people are hungry?”
The club’s first club fair tabling this semester saw a large increase in student involvement. The organization has since started a Thursday morning meal service at Kennedy Plaza, independent of the Providence chapter.
“We’re trying to go beyond just serving,” Isabela Venegas-Ramirez ’27 said. “We want to focus on political education and actions that go beyond serving food.”
