The Beloved Early Education (BEE) Care Collective, an advocacy group that has been making headlines lately for its work with educators and parents, recently launched a pilot nutritional program to extend its early care to include offering fresh meals to Black, Latina and Indigenous pregnant women and new mothers.
Director of Reproductive Justice, Simone Lee, said that the BEE Collective works to make sure families have the support and guidance they need throughout their perinatal stages.
And now, thanks to funding from Roper Saint Francis Physicians Endowment of the Coastal Community Foundation, the collective’s mission includes feeding new and expecting mothers and their families healthy, well-balanced meals. The one year pilot will provide biweekly “heat n’ eat” meals from Fresh Future Farm.
“This food pilot is so, so important because we have counties like Berkeley and Dorchester who have been identified as maternal health deserts,” Lee said. “We know that if a person is lacking quality health care, those are going to be the same people who experience food insecurity.”
The BEE Collective points people to a March 2023 Feeding America study, Map the Meal Gap, that indicates that “Black, Native American and Latino individuals are 2 to over 3 times more likely to live in food insecure households.”
Lee said that the Collective works hard to identify specific needs of the communities it serves — and at clinics and community events, they heard the need for food. “Recurring themes that we see are individuals with food insecurity, transportation insecurity and housing insecurity,” she said. “So because we have this partner in Fresh Future Farm, it was just a no brainer for us to be able to say, ‘How can we partner to at least assist in this one critical piece?’”
Food deserts, like North Charleston’s south end, lack nourishing food options. “The things that are going to be quickest for you to get are going to be the worst things for your body nutritionally,” Lee said. When the only food sources are convenience stores, families, especially ones that lack transportation, are forced to support themselves with what’s available. “A lot of people who are in rural areas, which is what [we] want to focus on — people who are in rural, hard to reach areas in Dorchester County — the closest grocery store might be 20 miles away,” she said.
The Fresh Future Farm meals will include meat, grains and seasonal vegetables, and they’ll be designed with taste in mind. “We’re trying to make them culturally specific. A lot of times when you have these meal programs, when you get it, it’s stuff that you don’t want to eat,” Lee said. “If we could take one thing, one less worry from a pregnant and postpartum family off of their shoulders, then that is exactly what we’re trying to do.”
The program is still in its beginning stages, but hopes to be feeding 10-15 families a month soon. And while initial funding has gotten the program off the ground, it needs sustained funding for long term success. Learn more about how you can support the BEE Collective online at beecollective.co/donate.
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