Mayor's Food Drive

Today, Mayor David P. Maher announced the kickoff of the Mayor’s Food Drive from Monday, Sept. 8 to Wednesday, Oct. 1 to benefit Cambridge-based food pantries. The Mayor’s Office will be collecting donations of nutritious, non-perishable items in the Mayor’s Office on the 2nd Floor of Cambridge City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Avenue, during regular City Hall hours.

“As the colder weather and the holidays approach, the demand on our food pantries inevitably increases. We live in a very generous community and our hope is to alleviate that need with the donations we collect throughout the month,” said Mayor Maher. “This September is an opportunity for the city to both celebrate our existing public spaces with PARK(ing) Day, as well as draw attention to the hard work that often goes unseen at our local food pantries.”

Cambridge food pantries are an essential resource that helps support low income families, individuals with disabilities, the unemployed, seniors with limited mobility, and many others. Local food pantries also offer a variety of resources surrounding housing stability, access to higher education programs, and advocacy for the needs of their visitors. The Mayor’s Office would also like to use the platform of PARK(ing) Day to draw attention to the incredible work of our food pantries, to thank them for their efforts, and to collect donations to be distributed to Cambridge-based organizations.

“I hope that our food drive, as well as our space on PARK(ing) Day, will not only collect a great deal of donations, but will also serve as a celebration of the generosity and dedication of our food pantries to help our most vulnerable populations,” said Mayor Maher. “I would like to invite residents of the entire City, its employees, businesses and organizations to bring a donation of a non-perishable item to our office, or our PARK(ing) space on September 19.”

PARK(ing) Day is a global event in which metered parking spaces are temporarily transformed into small public parks in order to spark critical thinking and conversation about urban environments and to allow for creative civic and community engagement. Nine years ago, Rebar, a San Francisco based art and design studio, started PARK(ing) Day to challenge how people think  about  the way streets are used, and the event  quickly spread throughout the United States, and the world. It is now an annual event that occurs on the third Friday of September to elevate and celebrate public spaces. As of 2011, there were over 975 PARK(ing) Day installations around the world. As the event continues to grow and evolve, it has emerged as a great platform to draw attention to different social issues and causes in its respective environments.

If there are questions regarding what items to donate, individuals, businesses and organizations are encouraged to call the Mayor’s Office at (617) 349-4321 or email us at mayor@cambridgema.gov.