21 Sep Tackling Food Insecurity with Lasagna Love
Article by: Isla Dua
Food security in the United States has been a huge problem for a while now. According to Feeding South Florida, 12% of individuals in South Florida experience food insecurity. One of the most recent impacts on this issue was COVID-19. Before the coronavirus, 2.8 million people in the state of Florida were food insecure. Now, in the midst of the pandemic, 3.6 million people are food insecure.
There are a few reasons as to why. First, many families lost their jobs or struggled to find work making it harder to access resources such as food. Secondly, food prices world-wide inclined by over 33.9%. Lastly, many schools have closed temporarily or gone online over past months. This means that all of the children who depend on school lunches for a meal stopped receiving them. Because of this, almost 370 million children world-wide were deprived of those important meals.
After learning this, we wanted to help our Miami community to help alleviate some stress from food insecurity. We discovered an incredible organization called Lasagna Love that unites neighbors through a meal baked with love. They started their initiative at the beginning of Covid. The founder and her young daughter started making and delivering lasagnas to families in need around their neighborhood at the beginning of Covid. Now, Lasagna Love has now grown into a national movement. Not only do they serve 3,500 meals each week, but also their actions spread kindness as well. The movement has over 20,000 volunteers and they serve in all 50 states. At Miami Strong, we were very eager to help contribute in any way we could. It was such a heart-warming feeling when we received the notification that we have been matched with a local family in need. We prepared the dish using an old family recipe and were delighted when the family told us how much they enjoyed the food. We cannot wait to continue working with Lasagna Love and meeting new families!
Lasagna Love: https://lasagnalove.org/