Her goals: Fill the refrigerators and combat ‘food apartheid’
Anderson, featured on Time cover, aims to fight food insecurity — and its stigma
Jammella Anderson and I sat on the front steps of the Free School, next to a brightly painted and freshly restocked free food fridge, and talked about the dizzying rise that recently landed her on the cover of Time magazine.
“I still don’t know how the Time cover happened, but they reached out to me. All I can figure is they saw a video Buzzfeed posted about me a few weeks ago,” Anderson said on a chilly Saturday morning.
Anderson and her Free Food Fridge Albany project were highlighted in the magazine’s double issue on Women and the Pandemic. “To Anderson, access to a decent meal is a human right, not a luxury,” the Time article said.
Anderson was quick to point out she hopes the recognition shines a light on other hard-working volunteer groups she admires that are addressing poverty and hunger: Feed Albany, South End Children’s Café and the 518 Free Store in Schenectady.
Anderson is eight months into a seven-day-a-week pandemic passion project that has enjoyed exponential growth and the collective embrace of hundreds of helping hands and caring hearts.
She partners with anyone from schoolchildren to corporate donors, local farmers to restaurant owners, and a growing number of individuals who buy groceries and personally stock refrigerators. It’s an improvised network of humanitarians feeding hungry local people.
Anderson remains astonished by how her simple idea has provided tons of fresh produce, dairy products, frozen meat and other food staples from curbside refrigerators in urban neighborhoods to anyone who needs it – anonymously and judgment-free.
From one refrigerator and a single Albany location, Anderson and her hardy band of volunteers have expanded the effort to include eight fridges
stocked daily: five in Albany, two in Troy and one coming to Schenectady.
“Food insecurity is not new, but it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic,” said Anderson, for whom the personal becomes the political. “Black and brown people have been marginalized for generations when it comes to access to fresh, highquality food. I call it food apartheid.”
Anderson is a force of nature who has managed to build from scratch, despite the COVID-19 lockdown, a hunger action plan. She has single-handedly raised more than $200,000, primarily in small online donations, to keep it all going.
“She’s a superhero through and through who lives the mission,” said Paul Collins-hackett, executive director of The RED Bookshelf, a literacy program that distributes free books to underserved children in Albany. He has known Anderson for years through community activism, including the Black Lives Matter movement.
When he heard about the Time cover, he called Anderson screaming in delight. “I was so proud of her because it’s a wonderful recognition for a Black
woman and exactly what our community needs now,” Collins-hackett said. “She has the ability to inspire people.”
Anderson, 30, who lives in Albany, is a 2009 Shenendehowa High School graduate who knew another side of Clifton Park’s image as an affluent suburb in Saratoga County. She was raised by a single mother, lived in federally subsidized housing and used food stamps.
“The language people use around public assistance brings a lot of shame,” she said. “My goal is to destigmatize that. Why should someone who is houseless or food-insecure feel any less worthy as a human being?”
Anderson supports herself as a yoga teacher and a doula, or birth coach. When those gigs dried up during the pandemic, she turned to selling Black Lives Matterthemed
apparel and items developed with other artists and businesses in collaboration with The Mailworks, an Albany print and mailing company. The merch was so successful she donated a portion of the proceeds to her Free Food Fridge Albany project.
Anderson also works as a brand ambassador on social media for Honest Weight Food Co-op in Albany. Store managers, who worked with her on Black Lives Matter initiatives, signed up to stock the first free food fridge at the Free School.
“We saw these programs in other cities around the country and were thrilled when Jammella wanted to start one here in Albany,” said Alex Mytelka, marketing manager at Honest Weight. “She grew it so quickly. Jammella is a complete rock star.”
Anderson is a neardaily presence at the co-op, where she talks to shoppers about her mission to get quality food to those who need it most. According to the USDA, more than 11 million children in the U.S. live in “food-insecure” homes. The economic impact of the pandemic could drive that number as high as 18 million children facing hunger this year, according to experts. The Regional
Food Bank of Northeastern New York, from its warehouse in Colonie, distributed 41 million pounds of food in 2019 and 55 million pounds in 2020. It struggled to meet unprecedented demand at soup kitchens and food programs it serves in a 23county area.
Honest Weight not only stocks a refrigerator twice weekly with local produce, milk, eggs and other food but also provides prepared meals and hundreds of sandwiches made in its deli purchased as donations by customers.
On this Saturday, Anderson piloted her black Dodge Ram van, nicknamed Marigold, laden with boxes of food filled by teachers and students at KIPP charter school in Albany. She was assisted by volunteer Trevor Gagnon, who lost his bartender’s job when COVID-19 shut down the restaurant where he worked. He knew poverty growing up in the Capital Region.
“I was embarrassed to use food stamps,” Gagnon said. “That’s why I just leave the people using the fridges alone to do their own thing. I don’t want them to feel ashamed or embarrassed.”
Gagnon began working with Free Food Fridge Albany a couple of months ago to acknowledge the assistance his family received when they needed it and to pay it forward.
“Jammella is so passionate about what she does, I wanted to be around that energy,” Gagnon said. “It feels good to help.”
As we spoke, two senior women pulled up in a minivan, stopped at the refrigerator and took apples and a bag of frozen Italian-style chicken meatballs. They were bringing them to an elderly homebound woman on a fixed income in the neighborhood who makes homemade applesauce to share with others. “Praise the Lord,” she says when they arrive with fresh apples.
“Thank you for all you do,” the driver called out to Anderson before she drove off.
“That’s why I do this,” Anderson said, and her eyes sparkled behind heart-shaped spectacles.
To learn more, including the location of fridges and how to donate or help, go to freefoodfridgealbany.com.