NYC�s City Harvest Distributes 400,000 Lb. of Produce for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
By Staff Writer
City Harvest, the world's first food rescue organization dedi-cated to feeding NYC’s hungry men, women and children, is distributing more than 400,000Lb of produce and canned food for the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Through the end of September, during a time when many Kosher observers are struggling to provide food for themselves and their families, City Harvest is working to deliver additional emergency food to its network of more than 30 Kosher food pantries and soup kitchens across the five boroughs.
City Harvest has sourced 400,000 pounds of produce – including sweet potatoes, white potatoes, carrots, onions, peaches, and apples – specifically for its efforts surrounding the High Holidays, which will be distributed to Kosher emergency food programs across the city.
City Harvest also expects to collect some 30,000 pounds of canned and packaged Kosher items from congregations around the city that have been running High Holiday food drives. In 2012, Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan collected 45,000 pounds in their High Holidays food drive.
City Harvest’s Kosher Initiative addresses the often overlooked problem of hunger in the Jewish community. Since 2002, City Harvest has rescued and delivered, free of charge, more than 20 million pounds of healthy Kosher food, including some 15 million pounds of produce, to emergency food programs serving Kosher observers.
The UJA Federation’s most recent study in 2012 uncovered that more than 330,000 Jews in New York City are living below or slightly above the federal poverty level, struggling on a daily basis to feed, clothe and house their families – a 47% increase since 2002.
City Harvest has seen that visits to Kosher agencies in its network has increased by more than 17% since 2012. This year, City Harvest will deliver three million pounds of emergency food to its network of more than 30 Kosher food pantries and soup kitchens, helping them serve more than one million visits annually.
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ABOUT CITY HARVEST
Now serving NYC for over 30 years, City Harvest (http:// www.cityharvest.org/) is the world's first food rescue organi-zation, dedicated to feeding hungry men, women, and children
This year, City Harvest will collect 46 million Lb of excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, ma-nufacturers, and farms. This food is then delivered free of charge to some 400 community food programs throughout New York City by a fleet of trucks and bikes. City Harvest helps feed the more than one million New Yorkers that face hunger each year.
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INFORMATION
For information about how a school, synagogue or organization can run a Kosher Food Drive, please contact Jeanne Traugot at 646.412.0755; email: jtraugot@cityharvest.org.
