A woman on a mission to help eradicate hunger and destigmatize food insecurity and malnutrition is opening dozens of small refrigerator doors for communities to access fresh and healthy food, while educating the public on the importance of nutrition and sustainability.
Asmeret Berhe-Lumax has made it her mission with One Love Community Fridge "to connect, empower and engage the community through education and providing access to free and healthy food, leading with respect, dignity and health."
"Food is the foundation of health. Food is information, food is medicine, food is power, and food is something that connects us all and that we all as human beings need to survive," the organization's founder and CEO told "Good Morning America" about the inspiration behind her nonprofit. "If you don't have the opportunity to be healthy and don't have access to food, you're not going to be able to take advantage of any educational opportunities. So it all starts with food."
Berhe-Lumax, who was born in East Africa and grew up in Sweden, began stocking a single community fridge in Brooklyn, New York, with her family as a personal project during the height of the pandemic before scaling it to the nonprofit organization it has become today.
"Food has always been a part of our family and our community. It's an amazing tool that can also bring so many people together across different cultures and generations," she said. "Raising a family here and especially being part of both the public and private school system and seeing the differences in terms of what the kids have access to -- and seeing how early that affects [them], not just, like, physically, but also mentally, their ability to focus -- made me realize how important access to fresh and healthy food was."
Berhe-Lumax opened One Love Community Fridge in June 2020 to provide free food to the local communities in need, at a time when there was greater need for food access, as food banks were experiencing longer lines due to COVID-19.
According to Feeding America, some 47 million Americans are facing food insecurity. In New York City, where Berhe-Lumax lives, around 1 in 5 children are food insecure, according to the nonprofit.
"We have four different programs -- ecosystems -- and we help redirect food through an amazing volunteer community from our food partners," Berhe-Lumax explained of how her organization operates.
One Love Community Fridge, which stocks fridges seven days a week, 365 days a year, with a variety of fresh produce, ready-made meals, meats and baked goods from donors, has expanded from its Brooklyn roots to 40 community fridges across New York City in recent years. The organization also expanded to Seattle, Washington, earlier this year.
"We have plans for other cities throughout the next coming months as well," Berhe-Lumax added.
The hyperlocal initiatives are a result of food partnerships on three levels: chefs and local individuals in the community, local small businesses and restaurants in proximity to the fridges, and big food partners and global brands.
"You have the individual, which might be smaller volumes, but it's important for community; you have local businesses, which are extremely important; and then you need the larger business as well, because that provides volume," Berhe-Lumax said of the tiered approach to ensuring full fridges. "No amount is too small and no amount is too big."
In 2024, Berhe-Lumax said the nonprofit redirected over 2.5 million pounds of food "that would have been marked as excess food that we helped redirect from landfills and instead [went] to families in need," serving 800,000 people in the communities they support.
"I'm literally blown away still -- it's amazing quality, it's great food, and it's really amazing that it ends up going to families in need, rather than going to waste," she said. "The companies have already invested into the food, or farmers have already helped grow it. So it's truly mind blowing."
Unlike a traditional food pantry, the community fridges are built in a way where they are "owned and cared for by the community," Berhe-Lumax explained, adding that they have a team who helps clean and stock them.
"It's open for everyone. We do respect people's privacy -- once we put the fridge [in], it's free for anyone to come and take [food], and its available 24/7," she said.
"The face of food insecurity is not the face that most of us think. It's across the board," she added. "We see people who are unsheltered, but we also see people who are looking for community -- you don't necessarily have to live in a certain zip code or be a specific demographic."
Many community members the organization helps are "seniors, students, or family members that can't meet needs -- or families that just are on a very, very, very tight budget where they have to compromise and get food that's not really nourishing their bodies," Berhe-Lumax said.
"It's not just about bringing food to the fridge -- it's about addressing public health and what that means," she said. "What is the food? How are we bringing it to the fridge? How are people receiving it? [Those are] all [just] as important."
"People are feeling ownership of the fridge and accountability and responsibility," she added. "We use design a lot in terms of how we build One Love -- we emphasize in our design respect, dignity and health ... when people come to the fridge, [we want them to] feel valued and seen and it changes how people show up in their communities."
