Impossible Foods recently announced a collaboration with Colin Kaepernick and Know Your Rights Camp to support food security and social justice throughout 2020. The partnership began in San Francisco this month and will include Los Angeles and New York, with additional cities to be announced.
Each location will cook and distribute Impossible Burgers with local food banks donating additional ingredients and prepared meals. Since the pandemic began, Impossible Foods has provided relief to over 750,000 people experiencing food insecurity. The startup is on track to donate plant-based meat to feed at least 1 million people this year with plans to extend its donations throughout 2020.
Know Your Rights Camp is a multi-city program to advance civil rights through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization, and leadership. The nonprofit operates camps for children of color throughout the US. The organization was founded by Colin Kaepernick, who played for the San Francisco 49ers and gained worldwide attention by kneeling in the 49ers’ final 2016 preseason game during the national anthem to protest social inequality and police brutality.
“Gaining access to healthy and affordable food should not be a challenge for residents of any community,” said Patricia Robinson, Director of Community Outreach, Know Your Rights Camp. “Know Your Rights Camp is committed to participating in changing the outcomes and disparities that currently exist for families, while we further grow awareness and acknowledge that maintaining good health and nutrition should not be selective for some, but should be experienced by all.”
In the best of times, one in seven US children suffers from food insecurity. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the longstanding problem of hunger into an acute crisis, with unemployment at levels not seen since the Great Depression.
Also, widespread school closures have eliminated a once-reliable source of free or subsidized breakfasts and lunches. Since April, more than one in five households in the United States, and two in five families of mothers with children 12 and under, are food insecure.
“Impossible Foods’ mission is to reverse the clock on climate change, restore biodiversity and expand natural ecosystems — results that will literally transform the way earth looks from space,” said Impossible Foods’ CEO and Founder, Dr. Patrick O. Brown. “At the same time, as an essential business in an unprecedented challenging time, we also exist to serve the most basic and immediate needs of our community — including the food insecurity crisis and social justice struggles in our hometown region of the San Francisco Bay Area and communities throughout America.”
In addition to donating to Know Your Rights Camp, Impossible Foods has donated plant-based meat to organizations that seek to increase voter registration and fight against police brutality. And directly to food banks and others working to solve food insecurity and social justice issues.
