Background: In the last months of 2020, as community members, small businesses and restaurants were struggling, the Alaska Hospitality Retailers Association, the Municipality of Anchorage, and United Way of Anchorage created an innovative partnership to bring desperately needed revenue to Anchorage restaurants. The goals were to keep restaurant workers -- cooks, dishwashers, and delivery staff -- on the job, to keep restaurants purchasing food and supplies, and to provide welcome meals to low-income families, children, youth, and seniors who are underserved and food insecure. 
 
Between November 2020 and April 2021, the program provided 110,965 meals to children, youth, seniors, people experiencing disabilities, victims of domestic violence, and those seeking housing, jobs, and safe shelter. The impact of this project meant that many non-profits who participated were able to save funding and time to dedicate additional support for their participants during the demanding time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new opportunity: Additional funding has been made available by the Municipality of Anchorage and will provide meals to organizations from July to December 2021.  There will be two sessions for the meals – the summer round will run from approximately July 19th to October 10th, and winter round will run from approximately October 11th through January 2, 2022, or when funding is expended.  The program will once again target locations that are serving meals to children, youth, elders, people experiencing disabilities and those who are housing insecure or seeking safe shelter.

Who will be eligible? The United Way will be looking for sites that serve the target population(s) and have on-location meal service that can distribute and ensure delivery or consumption to participants quickly. The meals are in individual containers that are subject to protocols for take-out service delivery. Meals are monitored for food safety. In prior rounds of the program, recipient sites had between 35 and 135 people receiving any combination of breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day. Meals were provided between 1 and 7 days per week.

Interested?  Please complete the survey in the link below.  Please note that the survey will be used to indicate interest in this program and if we have more interested non-profit partners than we can take in our sessions, we may hold a lottery for participation in the program.


Restaurant and Hunger Program Survey


For more information: [email protected]

Thank you for all the work that your organizations do for our community and for your support of Anchorage as we recover from the pandemic!
 

Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson launched his first term in public office Thursday by issuing a series of mayoral directives within hours of being sworn in...

In a fourth directive, Bronson announced that the city will not require municipal employees to be vaccinated and he rescinded any remaining mask mandates in buildings owned, leased or used by the city. “People get to make their own choice on what they’re going to do,” Bronson said of the directive. 
 

Institute for Community Alliances (ICA) Updates

The Biden-Harris administration took several steps to help renters and homeowners who are struggling amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. It extended the moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures for federally-backed mortgages through July 31 and announced a series of actions to help state and local governments prevent evictions.

The extension of the federal moratorium is just the start. Read the full article here.

USICH Outlines Commitment to Racial Equity at NCHV Conference