WHO WE ARE
Healthy Food for Everyone
Bmore Veggie Connection was formed to make it easier for Baltimore residents to make healthy dietary decisions. Started by a group of Library and Information Science students at the University of Maryland, BVC provides links to helpful resources providing free produce, meals, pantry staples, & food preparation tips.
Everyone deserves to live a healthy lifestyle. One in four Baltimore residents lives in a food desert, meaning that they face additional challenges when trying to eat a healthy diet. It's harder to buy produce, for example, when there are no grocery stores in your neighborhood, you face mobility issues, or large grocery purchases just aren't in your budget.
Thankfully there are many sources within Baltimore that provide fresh produce and other grocery items free of charge. Bmore Veggie Collective does not run and is not affiliated with any of the services listed on this website; we simply compile them all into easy-to-use lists and maps that can be accessed on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
It can be overwhelming to need access to food, making searching for resources that are scattered throughout multiple websites stressful. Our goal is to relieve some of this stress by providing access to all of these valuable resources on one simple website. We hope that by doing this, Baltimore residents will be able to improve their diets, health, and happiness.
What's Being Done
Fighting Food Insecurity
Food insecurity is defined as being without reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable and nutritious food. Many Baltimore residents face food insecurity whether they live in a food desert or not. Here are a few of the local organizations working to combat both food deserts and food insecurity:
The Baltimore Food Policy Initiative from the Baltimore Office of Sustainability works "to improve health outcomes by increasing access to healthy affordable food in Baltimore City's Healthy Food Priority Areas". Their website provides numerous links to their policies and efforts since their inception in 2010, as well as an archive of their appearances in local media. .
The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future examines the entire food system in Baltimore-- from production to distribution and beyond-- and makes recommendations to city government for improvements via the Baltimore Food Policy Advisory Committee. Their goal is to improve the equity and sustainability of the food system in Baltimore, and they are currently studying urban farming initiatives, food policy and education, the relationship between demographics and food, and more.
