Why did your organization specifically want to get involved with this food access program?

Well, we've been running for almost 17 years now, and food sharing has always been a part of what we do at The Mess Studio.

Basically, we are using art and food to build healthy community.

So when I saw the opportunity to apply to actually make it more of a organized pantry, I was excited about that because, as you know, the past few years, food prices have just skyrocketed, and largely, our community does need some help in regards to food access.

So I applied for the funding to get, number one, a freezer, because sometimes we get our food through the community food redistribution warehouse, Lionhearts, and quite often we would get so much in a week, and then the next week, because there's so many agencies needing help, we'd get hardly anything, and we were trying to balance out, because we run on a pretty tight operating budget.

Food is a major part of that.

It also allows us to put some shelf-stable things for people during the winter or summer.

[laughs]