Food insecurity in Puerto Rico is an island-wide phenomenon that has only been exacerbated by
recent events such as Hurricane Maria and the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2017, Hurricane Maria swept
through the Caribbean, leaving $91 billion of destruction in its wake. Most of this destruction was in
Puerto Rico, causing a collapse of transportation infrastructure, the power grid, and the agricultural
system, which suffered nearly $780 million of this damage. 90% of Puerto Rico’s food is imported,
leaving it particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, and, with the collapse of local agriculture and
infrastructure in the wake of Maria, access to food–especially fresh food–has become incredibly
difficult. The issue has only been compounded by the COVID-19 crisis. Supply chain failures continue to
disrupt food imports, increasing the amount of PAN participants (Puerto Rico’s version of SNAP) to 1.35
million–over ⅓ of Puerto Ricans.
Our mission as a grassroots non-profit organization is to improve policy, strategic programming and
infrastructure to bolster Puerto Rico’s food security. We initially started as a group of eager volunteers
who wanted to help marginalized and emergency-struck communities receive the food they needed to
continue their daily life. Distributing food to communities throughout the island during the pandemic
made us realize the enormity of the issue of food insecurity in Puerto Rico. We went to work. Since then,
we have grown into an organization that collaborates with over 120+ community organizations and
manages a mesh-network of over 500 volunteers. Throughout these last two years of operation we have:
distributed over $3MM worth of food, 1,500 vaccines to rural communities, 1.1MM units of PPE’s, have built
5 community gardens in marginalized Puerto Rican communities, and have begun an education initiative
consisting of seminars, food security surveys, and a podcast.