Madison Community Foundation and Ascendium Education Group each contributed $5,000 to Madison Public Library Foundation for food programming at Meadowridge Library. The donations will support food-related events for library users, including free snacks and meals, cooking classes, and maintenance of the library’s kitchen.
“These kinds of donations are vital for us to continue the services that we are providing to our community, and help reach lives through different experiences and services,” said Meadowridge Library Supervisor Yesianne Ramirez.
Meadowridge is located in a neighborhood where homelessness, job and food insecurity, and a lack of health resources are prevalent. As a broad resource, the Meadowridge kitchen serves a variety of these community needs. Funding for the project is used to hire chefs for cooking classes, maintain kitchen appliances, and cater library programs.
Some of these programs involve recurring group activities, such as Anime Club, which uses the kitchen twice per month. Nutrition education and cooking classes also use kitchen space occasionally. Other programs involve partnerships with organizations such as NewBridge to offer lunches for seniors, or the Meadowood Neighborhood Center to provide food for kids and teens after school. When school is not in session, the kitchen also offers food that youth would not have access to otherwise.
“The efforts of the Meadowridge kitchen were a perfect fit for the Ecumenical Housing Fund for Nutrition at the Madison Community Foundation,” said Tom Linfield, Madison Community Foundation’s Vice President of Community Impact.
In addition to the direct benefits of food-related services, the Meadowridge kitchen connects community members to other kinds of library services that boost health literacy. For example, when seniors utilize the NewBridge lunch program, they interact with staff members who can connect them to health services like blood pressure monitoring or screening for diabetes. The kitchen also provides space and resources to support cultural events like Día de Los Muertos celebrations.
Post-pandemic, rising costs to hire chefs, fund services, or purchase equipment have created challenges for maintaining the Meadowridge kitchen. In this environment, donations from community organizations like Madison Community Foundation and Ascendium Education Group help keep important services running.
“As we have to confront those new challenges, this kind of support is ideal for us to be able to not take away something that our community is reliant on,” Ramirez said.