Fuel Your Future
Providing Hunger Relief for Those in Need during the COVID-19 Crisis
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Food insecurity is on the rise because of the pandemic.
Many families and individuals in Seattle and King County are increasingly unsure of where their next meal will come from.
One in three Washington households have sought food assistance during the pandemic. Over half the households experiencing food insecurity had children in them.
Before COVID-19, Black, Indigenous, Latino and other communities of color were facing disproportionate levels of poverty and food insecurity because of historic and systemic racism. The pandemic has only exacerbated those inequities.
With partners like DoorDash and Safeway, United Way of King County is working with the community to provide hunger relief to tens of thousands of our neighbors every week.
How It Works
1. A box of essential groceries or bag of culturally appropriate food is prepared.
2. A DoorDash driver picks up the food.
3. The DoorDash driver delivers it to a King County household in need.
This is a free service for the household and it eliminates access barriers during the pandemic. Further, the DoorDash drivers get paid for their delivery, making it a win-win outcome.
Currently, the DoorDash partnership is delivering food to 6,000+ households—over 20,000 people—a week.
To address racial inequities and the disproportionate impact on communities of color, we’re targeting support throughout the county. Currently, 70% of food box delivery recipients identify as Black, Indigenous or as a person of color (BIPOC). We’re also partnering with communities to provide more culturally appropriate food, like produce boxes designed in collaboration with Vietnamese Mutual Aid.
“It has been a great deal of support while we seek employment and get back to our feet … You were our lifeline.”
–I.S., DoorDash program participant
Fighting Food Insecurity
The DoorDash delivery program is an important component of our overall effort to keep people, especially children, in King County from going hungry during the COVID-19 crisis. Some of our other efforts to fight food insecurity include:
- Expanding the City of Seattle’s food voucher program to support over 6,200 households.
- Partnering with FareStart, Seattle Housing Authority and YMCA to get healthy meals to 3,000 kids.
- Weekday deliveries of child meals to 12 affordable housing sites, reaching 1,000 kids every day. We’re scaling the program up to reach 24 sites throughout the county to reach 4,000 hungry children each weekday.
- Supporting food banks with supplies so they can operate safely while staying open and available to those in need.
- Expanding our Community Food funding to support our community’s BIPOC-led agencies to help distribute culturally appropriate food.
- Supporting school districts across the state in implementing Breakfast After the Bell—helping over 200,000 students have access to healthy meals as schools return to in-person learning.
- Supporting the Backpack Brigade with an additional 1,000 backpacks filled with food being distributed to kids every week.
- Recruiting and deploying over 125 HungerCorps AmeriCorps members each year to support hunger relief across the region.
- Providing technical assistance to schools across Washington, helping get food to 220,000 students per day.
Our Goal
What is clear, every day, is that the need for hunger relief in Seattle and King County is increasing as many people are affected by the pandemic.
The more money we raise to provide hunger relief, the more kids, families and people we can help. You can help by donating today.
Donor Spotlight
“What I love about the DoorDash partnership is that it’s a great, innovative way of connecting tech and helping people.” –Dre Gohlke, Alaska Airlines | Emerging Leaders 365 donor
Thanks to Our Donors and Sponsors
Thanks to donor support through the Community Relief Fund and the generosity of organizations such as DoorDash, Safeway and others, Fuel Your Future is providing hunger relief in a variety of ways.
Our partnership with DoorDash and Safeway is an exciting use of existing technology, food resources and delivery system that’s combating food insecurity in the local community right now.
