Fridge of Plenty

Just four weeks before the launch of her team’s community impact project, Leslie Candelario, a 20-year-old participant in the inaugural Aspen Young Leaders Fellowship (AYLF)’s Miami cohort, thought their cohort had hit rock bottom. The original idea for a community fridge that would provide fresh produce had unexpectedly fallen through after conflicting values made fellows part ways with the location set to host the fridge.

“They wanted to assign a cop for security, and we didn’t align with that, because that’s not what we wanted our project to be centered around,” says Candelario, now a youth facilitator for Miami 2024-25 cohort. “We had to put the fridge on hold, because we realized launching a fridge is harder than what it looks like. And although it’s not impossible, we were realistic with each other.”

The team had to quickly pivot, reaching out to other local organizations to launch a project that would address food insecurity. “One may think that in Miami everything’s so extravagant. But then on the other end, there’s also people that don’t have anything—don’t have the basic necessities including food, especially good, high quality food,” says Maria Fernanda Torres, one of 18 fellows who participated in the inaugural Aspen Young Leaders Fellowship (AYLF)’s Miami cohort.

Food insecurity—defined as limited or uncertain access to adequate food, per the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—can manifest into reduced food intake because of a lack of income to purchase food, hunger, or the inability to access balanced meals. Across the U.S., about 13.5% of the population is facing food insecurity. In Miami-Dade County, where the food insecure population is nearly 80,000, according to Feeding America, the rate is slightly higher than the national average, currently resting at 14.3%.

Although food inflation overall has been slowing, the prices of goods starkly increased following the Covid-19 pandemic, with food prices increasing by 9.9% in 2022, per the USDA. To address this challenge, fellows sought to launch a community fridge that would be housed near a neighborhood that was a food desert, where residents have limited access to nutritious and affordable food. For much of the planning of their CIP, the Miami cohort had defied the odds. Not being able to purchase a fridge due to insufficient funds, one AYLF Fellow — Ulysses del Pino — obtained one from a local medical school that would be disposing of it. The fridge sat in his backyard while fellows mulled over how to launch the “Fridge of Plenty.” When it proved difficult to get food donations from bigger retail chain grocery stores, fellows reached out to smaller supermarkets in the interim, before signing up to receive donations from Feeding South Florida by registering for it under a partner nonprofit, Gang Alternative. Despite such challenges, fellows pivoted by participating in a local fair where they handed out some 450 pounds of food to more than 200 local residents.

It was through the fair hosted by Lotus House Women’s Shelter that fellows met other local organizers whose values aligned with their mission. “We didn’t just want to leave a fridge there and just stock it up and then just come by to stock up the fridge. We wanted to actually know the people that are part of the community,” says Torres. The fridge launched on December 17, in partnership with Gang Alternative, Inc., a nonprofit which works to provide positive youth development opportunities for young people in the community. The “Fridge of Plenty” will rely on consistent donations of fresh produce about three times a month.

The process of bringing the community fridge to life brought much compromise, and recognition of the need to listen to local leaders before enacting their own ideas. “[The AYLF program facilitators] would remind us who we’re doing it for, who we’re trying to serve,” says Demi Trimm, a 23-year-old youth facilitator for Miami 2024-25 cohort.

And fellows are not done yet. Says Torres, “I think the hope is to work with [Gang Alternative] and eventually, once we start gaining experience, and we can stand on our own feet, we can become a nonprofit.”