Our Mission
West Side Campaign Against Hunger alleviates hunger by ensuring that all New Yorkers have access with dignity to a choice of healthy food and supportive services.
Our Journey:
1979: WSCAH is founded in the basement of St. Pauls & St. Andrews with a commitment to providing the healthiest food possible, with dignity, and empowering customers and the community we serve.
1993: WSCAH creates the first customer-choice supermarket-style pantry in the United States. Choose what you want! Fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, proteins, dairy.
2017: We launch our first Mobile Market partnership, bringing our choice offerings to our customers’ neighborhoods. In the following years, the Mobile Market expands to 15 partnerships in Manhattan and The Bronx.
2020: The twin pandemics of food insecurity and Covid-19 collide in an unprecedented emergency.
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- We step up to offer streetside distributions and increased services. We grow our food access sites from 16 to 30. We expand services across NYC, with sites in Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Manhattan.
- We ramp up our Benefits Access services and open a virtual call center so that all WSCAH customers across the five boroughs of NYC can safely access critical benefits and services from the comfort of their homes.
2022: A new food distribution model: WSCAH is partnering with community-based organizations in high-need neighborhoods to allow customers to select the healthy food they want and have that food delivered to a convenient location–all without having to leave home. The pilot deploys strategies and technologies that are ubiquitous and easy to use and is currently being evaluated by CUNY’s Urban Food Policy Center.