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About Project Bread

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It's about more than food

Hunger happens when there isn’t enough money to pay for rent, childcare, or medications, and still have enough left over to buy groceries to last all week. 

We make it easier for people to access and afford food with dignity - money for groceries, healthy meals for kids in their schools and all summer long, an expert helping you navigate your options to finally make ends meet. 

Our Mission

Project Bread connects people and communities in Massachusetts to reliable sources of food while advocating for policies that make food more accessible—so that no one goes hungry.

Our Commitment

Project Bread is committed to making sure that people in Massachusetts can afford enough to eat because hunger is an injustice. Hundreds of years of racist policies have made getting food more challenging for Black, Brown, immigrant, and Indigenous communities, causing the injustice that these identities experience hunger at higher rates. Project Bread must be proactive in fighting systemic racism and economic discrimination, and actively work to end racism and discrimination within systems and organizations, including laws and policies. We must engage voices of all identities in breaking down barriers to getting food.

We seek out the expertise of those who experience hunger and make sure those voices are at the center of Project Bread’s strategy, research, and programs. This is essential to our policy work to build a system based on equity so that everyone gets what they need to thrive.

We understand that our actions must match our words. Project Bread commits to these values as an anti-hunger nonprofit, as an employer, and as a member of the community.

We envision a Massachusetts where hunger is permanently solved for everyone.

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Giving support to our Massachusetts community

Providing Reliable Access to Food

Our work centers on a core tenet: connecting people to federal nutrition programs designed to supply meals and alleviate the economic burden of purchasing food on a tight household budget. Federal nutrition programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP), the National School Breakfast Program, and the Summer Food Service Program (Summer Eats) are designed to meet people where they are with resources that can truly be counted on, as these programs don’t depend on donations and volunteers to sustain them. We work to make these federal programs accessible to more households in Massachusetts through advocacy and programmatic partnerships while increasing utilization through outreach, awareness campaigns, and direct referrals. 

Little girl smiling at a picnic table with lunch at Summer Eats site Starts Line

Advocating for Solutions

Creating effective & equitable policies

Our policy team works tirelessly to advocate for scalable solutions to end hunger. We recognize that food insecurity is disproportionately experienced by people of color, immigrant families, and those with fewer economic means, which feeds into the cycle of poverty and generational hunger. We focus on identifying policies that create barriers to accessing sufficient food resources, then advocate for new policies that break these barriers down.

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Feeding Kids

Helping children thrive

Every child deserves to be fed and cared for. We focus on connecting families with children to reliable sources of food, so they can reach their academic potential and go on to live healthy, thriving lives. Through relevant federal nutrition programs, along with our School Breakfast and Summer Eats campaigns and school nutrition staff education and support, we focus on providing access to multiple touchpoints for children to get food and break the cycle of poverty.

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“Human beings need food. It’s a basic necessity we all require. So why are we fighting about who gets it and under what circumstances?”

Erin McAleer, President, Project Bread

Erin Mcaleer stands on a platform, speaks to a crowd at opening day of Mattapan Food & Fitness Coalition farmers market
Three women in vibrant clothing standing in front of a WIC table at the Mattapan Farmer's Market

Finding the Facts

Using data and research to inform our work

Project Bread believes in making equitable decisions based on comprehensive data—we center this by conducting our own analyses, research, and studies to inform our strategies.

Stats and Research

Additional Resources

Reports & Financials

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Our Staff

Meet the Team

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