How Outdoor Community Fridges
are Changing Life for Those Facing Hard Times
There are eight community fridges across Toronto where people are encouraged to take what food they need and leave what food they can. The fridges are helping people access healthy food — and for one senior, it’s an alternative to begging.
By Nick Purdon & Leonardo Palleja, CBC News, May 02, 2021
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/community-refrigerators-food-security-1.5981449
You might have spotted a refrigerator, painted with bright colours, out on a public sidewalk near where you live. If so, you’ve stumbled upon a growing international food-sharing initiative known as “the community fridge.”
The idea behind the fridges that have cropped all across Canada, especially since the pandemic began, is as simple as the motto painted onto their doors: “Take what you need — leave what you can.”
The refrigerators offer free food to anyone who needs it, and are stocked by anyone who wants to donate.
There are eight community fridge locations spread across downtown Toronto. CBC’s nightly newscast The National spent some time at several fridges and spoke to people who use them, as well as people who keep them filled.
How Canadians Started Community
Fridges in Their Cities
Danielle Froh and Brianna Kroener stand in front of the Regina Community Fridge, a hunger relief pilot project the two launched earlier this month.
By Al Donato, HuffPost, January 5, 2021
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/community-fridges-canada_ca_5fe13c8bc5b66809cb2cbed6
This is part of an ongoing HuffPost Canada series on food insecurity and how it’s affecting Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this edition, we talk to the everyday people running community fridges in their cities and find out what it takes for an everyday Canadian to run one in their area.
“Is your refrigerator running?” sounds like the start of a dad joke, but during a pandemic it’s taken quite literally by hundreds who depend on community fridges; usually outdoors, these fridges are stocked with donated food available to hungry locals for free, no questions asked.
With food insecurity soaring through the COVID-19 pandemic, community fridges have popped up across the U.S. and Canada, in the most ordinary of public places. In northern Calgary, there’s a fridge tucked between a computer store and a thrift shop. Regina’s fridge is humming in front of a family pharmacy. And on Prince Edward Island, a public library doubles as the home for a small, but mighty fridge.
Fridge Full of Free Snacks Installed at Public Library
Julia Stewart, director of the Fredericton Public Library poses with the library’s new Community Fridge on Thursday July 25, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kevin Bissett
By Kevin Bissett, The Canadian Press, July 25, 2019
https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/fridge-full-of-free-snacks-installed-at-public-library-1.4523699
FREDERICTON — The people who run the Fredericton Public Library are hoping to satisfy actual hunger as well as the hunger for knowledge.
They’ve installed a large refrigerator stocked with fresh fruit and other snacks that anyone using the library can access free of charge.
Julia Stewart, the library’s director, says staff are often asked if there is anything to eat by students who are studying and homeless people using the library as a place to spend the day.