New Cold Food Storage Expected to Bring Tenfold Increase in Food Distribution

On this MLK day, a couple of Dallas organizations in South Dallas partnered to address an issue Dr. King spoke of often. A new community cold food storage is now operating in an unlikely place, and it will more than quadruple the organizations’ food distribution efforts.

Immediately, it might not be the place you’d expect find people doing hours of community service. And If you’re not familiar with the area, you might not know dozens of people come here weekly for food to place on their dinner tables.

But that’s exactly what’s been happening here on Ferris Street for some time now – skateboarding and civic engagement. Now, thanks to a special partnership, more people will have healthy food they desperately need.

Theresa Tumminia is Cultural Director for the Oak Cliff Veggie Project. They partnered with the 4DWN Project to open a community cold storage facility right in the middle of 4DWN’s skate park in South Dallas.

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“This is the cold storage that we’ve been able to get up and running in the last two months,” Tumminia said. “Now because of the cold storage, we don’t have to worry about this fruit going bad today. So, we’re able to give that out on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday. We can set up a new system where we’re able to give out more food.”

Joseph Kim is assistant director a 4DWN. He skates and participates in food distribution weekly. He looks forward to serving more of the community with the cold food storage. Already, they’re calculating just how many more people will have food because of this one facility.

“It’s going to expand our capacity, I’m not kidding, tenfold,” said Tumminia. “And we can also run many different programs from out of this cold storage unit.”