It is crucial that our neighbors experiencing food insecurity don’t face additional barriers accessing foods they love and know how to cook.
In partnership with nonprofits across the Twin Cities, we’ve developed 13 pantry and spice packs containing various food items — like jalapeños, medjool dates, sriracha sauce or bamboo shoots — that, when supplemented with fresh items, create nutritious and familiar meals.
Every year, Flavors of Our Community unites corporate, nonprofit and individual efforts to promote food justice in our region. Collectively, hundreds of volunteers come together to purchase, assemble and donate thousands of pantry and spice packs to ensure all our neighbors can access the food they need and meals that feel like home. Please join us year-round to promote food security in our region!
Here’s how you can donate food packs to local food shelves:
Purchase, assemble and donate food packs representing Afghan, East African, Karen, Latine, Indigenous and Southeast Asian food preferences.
Your $17 donation DOUBLES to provide 8 meals for local families thanks to Cardinal Glass Industries, who is generously matching gifts up to $7,500. Your support helps our whole community thrive by providing foods that are local, nutritious and meet cultural preferences.
Purchase highly needed, culturally relevant items for local food shelves.
Email VolunteerUnited@gtcuw.org to learn how Volunteer United can partner with you!
The 6 cultures represented in the packs were determined in partnership with our food shelf partners as populations most highly impacted by historic and current systemic under resourcing. We continue to listen to our partners and reflect the current needs and requests from our neighbors experiencing food insecurity in our pack selection.
In partnership with local nonprofits and food shelves, we created food packs containing ingredients that are highly desirable and familiar to the communities our community partners’ support. When supplemented with fresh foods, the items in packs create dishes that align with cultural traditions and dietary needs.
We continue to listen to our partners and reflect what their communities express meet their needs and cultural preferences in our packs. In response to a community need expressed by our nonprofit partners, we added a Universal Baking Essentials pack to the existing pantry pack offerings. Over the past four years, we've expanded from 3 to 13 packs and we hope to add additional packs in future years.
We partner with 10+ non-profit partners who distribute the packs at their food shelf locations around the Twin Cities area. You can see the full list of our partners here.
We ask volunteers to assemble complete packs containing all items listed to the best of your ability. If items are inaccessible or missing, please include a note in your pack(s) listing each missing item.
If you’re looking to volunteer at home, we host a community-wide collection every March-April with designated open drop-off sites. However, we can accept food pack donations year-round! If you’d like to assemble and donate packs outside of this timeframe, please contact VolunteerUnited@gtcuw.org to coordinate a drop-off location and time.
If you are with a company or group looking to host a volunteer event, contact VolunteerUnited@gtcuw.org to learn more about corporate volunteer opportunities available year-round!
The Karen (pronounced kuh-ren) are an ethnic group of people from Myanmar (formerly Burma). The Karen have resided in Burma for over two thousand years but fled to Thailand and other countries as refugees because of religious and ethnic persecution. More than 20,000 Karen people live in Minnesota, making it the largest Karen community in the country. You can learn more about the Karen from our community partner, Karen Organization of Minnesota and from Minnesota’s Department of Human Services.
