“You Don’t Have To Be Bill Gates To Fix The Problem" Of Food Insecurity, Artist Says

BROOKLINE, MA — Problems such as food insecurity can seem insurmountable. For the people unable to adequately feed their families through no fault of their own, let’s call it what is: a deep, pit-of-the-stomach fear that food will run out before they have enough money to buy more, anxiety that what is in the cupboard is unhealthy, and even shame in turning to a food pantry or meal program.

Now, read what Michael Mittelman has to say.

He’s the Brookline artist and furniture maker who became something of a national celebrity with his COVID-19 pandemic-inspired Bowls For Food project that supports food banks, pantries and meal programs.

“Food insecurity is everywhere,” Mittelman told Patch in a phone interview last week. “It’s not just a problem for someone who is homeless. It’s in schools, it’s in colleges, it’s in neighborhoods.

“You don’t have to be Bill Gates to fix the problem,” he said, “and you don’t have to fix the problem to help.”

A collision of COVID-related economic crises pushed 1 in 5 Americans, found in every U.S. county, to their local food pantries during the pandemic, according to Feeding America, which supports 200 food banks that supply a vast network of local food assistance programs. As the second year of the pandemic comes to an end, getting enough to eat is still a daily difficulty for 38 million Americans, including 12 million children, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Recognize Your Privilege

Mittelman and his son, Max, started Bowls For Food in early 2020. Max was 11 at the time. He was on spring break, under lockdown and bored, which sparked a conversation that went something like this:

“Boredom is a privilege,” Mittelman told his son. “People are very scared. Let’s think what we can do.”

Mittelman had gotten back into spinning bowls using a lathe he got secondhand on Craigslist. He taught his son to use it, and together they built a small inventory and launched Bowls For Food to inspire donations to food assistance programs.

The idea is simple: Provide a receipt for a donation to any food assistance program in the country, and the Mittelmans will turn a bowl. The graduated scale for suggested donations is deliberate, a recognition that the desire to help isn’t exclusive to people of privilege.

“People who are the strongest advocates are often people who don’t have a lot of money,” Mittelman said. “They saved up to buy the bowls, and when we didn’t have any [immediately available in the inventory], they got into the habit of donating anyway.”

Demand for the bowls has not only pumped nearly $33,000 into food assistance programs across the country, it’s outpaced the Mittelmans’ capacity to turn the one-of-a-kind vessels from richly grained scraps of jatoba, red padauk, maple, birch and other woods. Temporarily, they’ve stopped taking orders.

The money that Bowls For Food generated for food assistance programs has helped during a time of increased need, but has also raised general awareness of “what is going on in everybody’s pantry,” Christina Peretti of the Greater Boston Food Bank, told Patch.

“People are connecting in ways they haven’t before,” said Peretti, the food bank’s assistant director of community investment. “This is really tangible, and it’s spurring people to participate in some way to solving hunger, keeping it front of mind.”

The U.S. economy is roaring back from the COVID-19 crash by many measures, but Peretti expects food insecurity to linger for many of the millions of Americans for whom hunger became a reality.

“Hunger isn’t going away,” she said.

Families thrown into food insecurity by the pandemic, many of them seeking food assistance for the first time, weren’t just hungry, Peretti said. It may take a while for them to pay off medical bills and other debt incurred when they lost their jobs or saw their hours cut, she said.

“Once life gets back to normal, it’s still going to take a long time for people experiencing food insecurity, housing insecurity — any of the insecurities — to get back to where they were pre-pandemic,” Peretti said. “They have medical and other bills, and it’s going to take a long time for them to be doing better than they were.”

Food insecurity isn’t a new problem. Before the pandemic, food banks and the local pantries and meal programs they support were a lifeline for about 35 million food insecure people, including about 11 million children, fewer than at any time in the past 20 years. The pandemic’s effect on food insecurity wasn’t as great as Feeding America initially warned, but gains to eradicate hunger nevertheless were erased, according to the hunger relief organization.

The Greater Boston Food Bank and others like it across the country saw an “incredible increase in demand” for services, Peretti said, “both clients who have used pantries pre-pandemic, but also people for whom this is new. We have a wide range of folks who are using our food pantry, all for different reasons. It’s skyrocketed and, unfortunately, we haven’t seen it go down.”

‘Hunger Is A Solvable Problem’

Each bowl is unique. Each one is a journey for Mittelman, who said that as an artist, Bowls For Food “touches a part of me that doesn’t get touched in my other art.”

“I have no idea what I’m going to make, how it will be shaped, until I find the curve and see what is revealed,” he said. “It touches that need for instant gratification. That product of a single moment, when it reveals itself, is very unusual.”

Mittelman is hard-wired to be humble about what he’s accomplished with Bowls For Food, a lesson of the medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides, and he was caught off guard the first time a friend said, “You just got me into a habit of giving that I didn’t have before.”

“Hunger seems like such a huge problem, and there are so many huge problems — the pandemic, all these divisions in this country — that people wonder, ‘Can what I’m doing make a difference?’ He’s showing it does.”

— Christina Peretti, Greater Boston Food Bank

But, uncomfortable as it is for Mittelman to shed his anonymity, his sudden celebrity shows philanthropy isn’t merely the purview of the Bill Gateses and Warren Buffetts of the world.

The project has been good for his family, too.

“Empathy isn’t a new thing in our family,” said Mittelman, the father of two. “Privilege is not something you can get rid of, but you can acknowledge it and do something good with it.”

One bowl at a time, the father-and-son duo have demonstrated the power of individual efforts in solving enormous problems like food insecurity.

“Real hunger is a solvable problem, and it’s also a problem everybody can get involved in solving,” Peretti said. “Everybody can do something with their own skills, whether volunteering a food pantry or giving your neighbors a ride to a food pantry. Whatever your abilities are, there’s definitely a way to help.

“Hunger seems like such a huge problem, and there are so many huge problems — the pandemic, all these divisions in this country — that people wonder, ‘Can what I’m doing make a difference?’

“He’s showing it does.”

How You Can Help

Patch has partnered with Feeding America to help raise awareness on behalf of the millions of Americans facing hunger. Feeding America, which supports 200 food banks across the country, estimates that one in five people turned to charitable food assistance for help during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a Patch social good project; Feeding America receives 100 percent of donations. Find out how you can donate in your community or find a food pantry near you.