Grassroots Grocery - Dan Zauderer

“I get a call, … I’m waiting outside on the street corner. … A pickup truck shows up, with a fridge on it. Two guys get out and drop this fridge on the street. And that’s literally the way it started. These two anonymous guys, who drop this fridge on the street. … And there’s this guy named Ruben. And he’s the gatekeeper of the block —making sure everyone’s on good behavior and nobody messes up the block and he says to me, ‘What is this?’ And I say ‘Its a community fridge’. ‘A fridge for the community?’ Yeah, I say. And he says, ‘I got you Dan, you and me, we’re going to do this’…

It was during COVID, and Dan Zauderer was a 6th grade Humanities teacher at the American Dream School in the South Bronx, a charter school in New York. The American Dream School specifically served the undocumented Latin American community. And because Dan taught in Costa Rica for a while, his Spanish skills were good, and it allowed him to get to know his students really well.

Because he took the time to lean into the school community, he discovered that many of many of his students’ families did not have access to basic resources. He sent out a survey via text message to eighty eight families and what he learned changed the course of his life. One in four families were cutting down on meals or skipping meals a few times a week. 

“The first project,’ he tells me, “Was raising money online. By tapping into the contacts he’d made throughout his life, he was able to raise in the tens of thousands of dollars. They raised money for hotspots, for books for summer reading and food supplies… "It was a great experience, to know that you could rally community that way.”  They began to send staples to his student’s families —cleaning supplies, beans and rice. But some of the families struggled more than others.  

They enrolled six families in a food delivery program, where they received weekly boxes of produce. Over time, the money ran out, but the food insecurity did not. It was in that experience that the seeds of Grassroots Grocery were sown.  

Dan Zauderer is a community builder, social entrepreneur, and the driving force behind Grassroots Grocery. His journey began as a middle school teacher at the Bronx’s American Dream School, where he discovered that one in four of his students were facing food insecurity. That moment changed everything. Leaving his teaching job, he co-founded the Mott Haven Fridge Network, a grassroots initiative that grew into Grassroots Grocery, a volunteer-powered movement bringing fresh, healthy food directly to communities that need it most.

Learn more about Grassroots Grocery here.

Do you know someone who has a story to tell? Someone who is giving back to their community? Working to make our world a better place? Send an email to suzanne@suzannemaggio.com. Nominate them for a future episode of From Sparks to Light.

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