How One Brooklyn Heroine Is Tackling Hunger in Her Hometown

For over a decade, Melony Samuels has tirelessly advocated against hunger. Her fight began, she says, after meeting a fellow mother of four who “was having a tough time taking care of her family.”

Melony brought food from her cupboards to the family and when the news about her good deed spread, she began to help more and more people.

Today, Melony is the heroine behind the Bed Stuy Campaign Against Hunger in Brooklyn. Each month, she helps to meet the needs of over 10,000 New Yorkers.

Her organization, she explains, wasn’t built over night. It’s success has come from listening to the needs of her community.

At first, Melony says, “we were giving out pre-packaged bags of food and we noticed that people were bartering or taking out food and leaving it on the street.” She and her team quickly realized they were not meeting the community’s nutritional needs. Twenty-three percent of the people they served were diabetic and others suffered from heart disease.

“By us adding all this salt and sugar and not having whole grain, lean meat and a healthy surplus of fruit and vegetables, we were not doing justice to the pantry or to the community,” Melony says.

Children and teens work in the garden and learn about growing fresh fruits and vegetables. (Photo c/o Bed Stuy Campaign Against Hunger)

This was in 2006 and over the last five years, her nonprofit has opened a supermarket-style pantry, Brooklyn’s only community-focused urban garden, culinary classes and healthy living and eating education for people of all ages.

When people come to the SuperPantry, what they find is a selection of whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetable grown in the garden or from a local farmer's market.

Many of the people who frequent the pantry, Melony says, are seniors. “They are battling between paying their bills, health insurance, medications and food. Of course, everything else is going to win.”

The Bed Stuy Campaign Against Hunger offers the seniors gardening, exercise and cooking demo classes and thus far, they have been very successful.

As you may imagine, it's not always easy to keep an organization like this up and running. Funding woes can sometimes be discouraging, Melony says, but “when you meet a mother with five children and the kids get to know you and just hug you because they are happy, you take a deep breath and say 'it’s worth it.'”

To make a donation to the Bed Stuy Campaign Against Hunger, click here.