For over 40 years, volunteers at Graffiti Community Ministries have gathered every Wednesday night, week after week, to share a hot meal and a warm welcome with their Lower East Side neighbors. The dignity of gathering and sitting together at a table is a simple tradition that has remained constant through years of changes in the neighborhood.
In February, something new and exciting happened: Graffiti Community Ministries became a part of the Hunger Collective! Rethink Food began providing 50 restaurant-quality meals every Wednesday and transformed how Graffiti serves without changing what matters most: to nourish its neighbors through food and community.
The Impact of Consistent Meals
The Hunger Collective was launched with moments like these in mind, to build systems for collective action and collaborative networks, so that simple but significant solutions can expand reach while reducing costs.
Rethink Food’s network of restaurant partners delivers professionally prepared, nutritious meals that not only help reduce Graffiti’s food budget but gives volunteers more time to focus on hospitality and relationship building. What they save can now be invested in expanding other programs serving their community.
Increasing Tangible Hope
By including Graffiti in the Hunger Collective, more food-insecure New Yorkers can receive tangible hope. A single parent doesn’t have to choose between dinner and rent. A neighbor experiencing homelessness will receive community and food. An elderly resident on a fixed income can stretch the budget just a little further.
Plus, strengthening partnerships within the Hunger Collectives means that, if and when a crisis does hit, we can respond with speed, quality, and consistency—just like we did when Rethink Food delivered 450 meals to The Salvation Army’s Astoria location in less than 24 hours during one of the coldest winter weeks.
Hope For New York also continues to work toward our goal of distributing 200,000 meals across New York City in 2026, so that no neighbor goes hungry.
Want to see tangible hope in action? Join the team serving Wednesday night meals. You’ll help welcome neighbors, serve food, sit at tables, and clean up—all the ways that turn a meal into community.
About the Hunger Collective
The Hunger Collective brings together nonprofits, food service providers, community organizations, and donors to create an efficient network that can respond quickly to food insecurity across New York City. Launched in 2025, the program offers tangible hope in three ways: we fund nonprofits with meal and food pantry programs, we mobilize volunteers to serve neighbors in need, and we have a food delivery hub that delivers both hot meals (from Rethink Food) and shelf-stable items (from Dream Center NYC) to communities.
As we expand the Hunger Collective, you can help us reach our ambitious goal of distributing 200,000 meals across our city in 2026.Your contribution will further fund meal preparation and delivery, and strengthen our capacity for emergency response. Let’s work together to make sure no New Yorker goes hungry. Learn more about how you can support.
About Rethink Food
Rethink Food is a chef-led nonprofit on a mission to build a more equitable and sustainable food system. We connect restaurants, community-based organizations, and food donors to deliver meals where they’re needed most. Since our founding in 2017, Rethink Food has provided more than 34 million meals to local communities, partnered with over 200 local restaurants and food businesses, repurposed more than 3 million pounds of donated food, and directed over $157 million to small, local restaurants and food businesses—many of which are minority- and women-owned. For more information and for donations, visit rethinkfood.org or follow @rethinkfood on Instagram.
