2022 Annual Report

We recognize that change starts with policy, but doesn’t end there. In 2020, Project Bread was instrumental in the successful passage of An Act Regarding Breakfast After the Bell, requiring all MA public schools where at least 60% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals to offer all students breakfast after the beginning of the instructional day.

Your generous support meant 174 school districts received expert guidance and assistance to successfully increase school breakfast participation, through one-on-one support, peer-to-peer connections, promotional materials, and even grant funding, You have provided an essential support to schools during this transition.

In Pioneer Valley, Bernardston and Northfield elementary schools made breakfast part of the school day with your help. The number of kids benefiting from healthy school food jumped from just 17 to 234 students after implementing Breakfast After the Bell and providing free meals to all students. That is a 1,276% increase!

You made sure that kids all over Massachusetts had access to free and fun meals over summer break.

You made it easier than ever for caregivers to find nearby locations providing food for kids and teens  — by making it possible for Project Bread to create new materials, increase promotion, make information available in nine languages, and launch a new and improved meal finder map.

With the help of a fresh new look for Summer Eats, kids ate 2,323,637 free meals in July, served at 1,495 locations. And everyone had so much fun while doing so!

In 2022, Project Bread demonstrated what we and supporters like you have known all along: preventing hunger improves health. 3,799 eligible MassHealth patients received Project Bread’s comprehensive case management, allowing them to feel better and live healthier — a 161% increase from the number of patients served last year!

• Food budgets got a boost, with $3.1 million in grocery store gift cards that allowed people purchasing power to shop for healthy food.
• Nearly $1 million in kitchen supplies made it possible for patients to properly store groceries and prepare nutritious meals at home.
• 882 people received nutrition counseling and learned how to apply it through nutrition-focused cooking classes. The number of patients reporting they are confident in their knowledge of what foods to eat increased by more than 41%. That is change that lasts!
   

Project Bread’s impact goes beyond helping individual patients. We are systematically integrating anti-hunger solutions into one of our nation’s largest systems: healthcare. Together, with our partners, we are opening a huge and untapped access point to reach people struggling without enough to eat. It is common sense that solving food insecurity improves health. Now, with your support, we are proving it is possible to scale this impact to improve community health and eventually reduce healthcare costs in Massachusetts.

At The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in September, Massachusetts emerged as a national leader fighting systemically to end the injustice of hunger. The impact from our innovative work in healthcare, alongside critical partners, stands to transform the way we address food insecurity in the United States forever.

In 2022, Project Bread demonstrated what we and supporters like you have known all along: preventing hunger improves health. 3,799 eligible MassHealth patients received Project Bread’s comprehensive case management, allowing them to feel better and live healthier — a 161% increase from the number of patients served last year!

Project Bread’s impact goes beyond helping individual patients. We are systematically integrating anti-hunger solutions into one of our nation’s largest systems: healthcare. Together, with our partners, we are opening a huge and untapped access point to reach people struggling without enough to eat. It is common sense that solving food insecurity improves health. Now, with your support, we are proving it is possible to scale this impact to improve community health and eventually reduce healthcare costs in Massachusetts.

At The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in September, Massachusetts emerged as a national leader fighting systemically to end the injustice of hunger. The impact from our innovative work in healthcare, alongside critical partners, stands to transform the way we address food insecurity in the United States forever.

Project Bread believes in the importance of centering people, not food, in solutions. Because of this, growing the staff of our Healthcare Partnerships program directly correlates to more people being food secure.

As plans were underway for the first White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in more than 50 years, our Congresspeople and Senators jumped into action to understand the challenges that make keeping food on the table seem impossible, what it means to be food insecure in Massachusetts, and what changes are needed, to inform the event and the White House plan to end hunger by 2030.

Because of you, Massachusetts emerged a leader. And the right voices were brought to the table.

Project Bread’s work on long-term solutions to food insecurity has yielded immense benefits throughout Massachusetts. In July, we outlined numerous recommendations to The White House, many of which were incorporated into the National Strategy, including:

• A pathway to universal school meals.
• Addressing food insecurity as part of health care by extending the Medicaid 1115 waiver, which enables our healthcare services model with MassHealth.
• Helping more families afford groceries to offset the “meal gap” over school break by making Summer EBT permanent.
• Making federal assistance programs more accessible by creating a common application for Medicaid, WIC, and SNAP.

Through your support, Project Bread is now leading the statewide coalition of anti-hunger, healthcare, and food systems partners to develop, advocate, and implement a Massachusetts-specific roadmap to end hunger by 2030.

You are helping to create pathways to change by supporting the work to create spaces for community conversations and engagement around food access through a brand new grant initiative. Through our equitable and inclusive multilingual grant process, 22 organizations applied to this program. 70% percent of applicants were new organizations to Project Bread, which yielded 55% of awardees being new partners to Project Bread. Projects with lenses of diversity, inclusiveness, and equity, were highly encouraged, and as a result, 88% percent of awarded organizations are minority-led.