Community Kitchens
AJ Foundation’ Co-Founder, Ann LeBlanc, inspired the development of our Community Kitchens and Outreach division.
She recognized our organization’s responsibility to put our resources, volunteers, and skills to use outside of disasters to feed food-insecure populations across the nation. She reminded Chef Gary that the call was not to “Just go feed people during disaster” but to “Just feed people. Just go feed people.”
In 2019, AJ Foundation launched its first permanent Community Kitchen at AJ Foundation’ headquarters in Portsmouth, Virginia.
This kitchen is the model for our community kitchen program that has since been replicated in Panama City, FL and Nashville, TN. We work with existing organizations within a community to maximize our joint efforts and to strengthen the community itself.
Our focus is not solely placed on our immediate impact but on long-term recovery and enrichment, as well.
Week in and week out, our community kitchens provide nutritionally rich meals in low-income communities among food insecure populations across the United States.
We provide food service to further the mission of local organizations with after school programs, resources for single mothers and their children, holiday meals, and more to actively create a measure of stability for families who do not know where their next meal will come from.
