Molly Thrasher of Try Freedom Stories has put together a video profile of One Can a Week, a small-scale, neighborhood-based anti-hunger program in Tucson, Arizona:
For those of you who'd rather read than watch, Thrasher wrote this description of the effort in a guest post for Bleeding Heart Libertarians:
"One Can A Week" is a neighborhood food collection program started in 2009. Peter saw families in Tucson struggling with poverty and hunger. The local food bank was not able to meet the demand. Peter asked his neighbors in his working class neighborhood, if they would donate just one can of food a week to help the needy. It worked. In the five years, his neighbors have collected 65,000 pounds of food and donated over $13,000 to the community food bank.
"One Can a Week" is the very definition of small-scale problem solving. Elinor Ostrom argued that many small-scale problems could be solved by relying on the local knowledge of those in the community. Peter saw a problem and knew that he could do something simply by working with his neighbors. This small project has had a huge impact but the significance of it is much larger. With similar small efforts in neighborhoods all over America, we could end the huge problem of hunger in our country.
Read the rest here. And check out Thrasher's IndieGoGo page, where she's raising funds for films about three more grassroots efforts against hunger.
