[16] Essential Food & Medicine: Free Food & Medicine for Underserved Communities

Cooperative Journal

Essential Food and Medicine is a mutual aid initiative based in Oakland, CA that started during the pandemic but has done an incredible amount of work in a short period of time. The co-founders integrated their love for community connection, food security, sovereignty, plant, and holistic medicine to create a resource to meet all of those essential needs for people. They reclaim surplus and locally grown produce to make juice, soups, smoothies, and natural medicine for underserved communities for free.

In this episode I speak with co-founders Xochitl Moreno and AshEL Elidrige. In the first half of the conversation we speak about Essential FAM as a whole -- like the voids they are filling, how they built the partnerships needed to supply the resources, how they distribute the medicine, and then we start to talk about Cob on Wood, a community built with cob they co-created in a homeless encampment. It has a free store, free health clinic, kitchen, bathroom, and community events to empower residents and have a safer environment. We speak about the history of Wood St. benefits of building with cob, how they raised money to build, the impeding and rapidly increasing issue of homelessness in CA, why they are facing eviction and how you can help.