When you’re in the business of fighting hunger and expanding economic opportunities, every year brings new challenges, unpredictable shifts, and unexpected chances to push your mission forward. But there’s never been a year like 2025.
Behind the national headlines are real local impacts. Rising unemployment in our nation’s capital. Sudden cuts to innovative public programs helping Virginia and Maryland farmers feed hungry families in our region. Worries about the future of DC’s beloved restaurant community. Growing concerns about how single mothers, seniors, and veterans will meet their basic needs.
Even as we grappled with these sweeping issues, DC Central Kitchen has also stepped up to meet immediate needs as they hit throughout this year, from feeding first responders in the aftermath of the tragic crash at DCA and cutting prices at our cafes for impacted federal workers to ensuring that snowstorms and inaugural road closures never caused a missed delivery to DC’s seniors or homeless residents. And now we’re ramping up an ambitious summer feeding campaign that will provide an urgent boost to struggling youth nonprofits and hard-hit small farmers at the same time while operating up to three simultaneous Culinary Job Training classes for our unemployed neighbors.
You trust DC Central Kitchen to provide the good jobs, healthy food, and hope our city needs—especially when times are tough. In recognition of that trust, we’re proud to share this snapshot of the impact YOU have had in the first six months of 2025, just when our community needed your generosity more than ever.
Thanks to you, DC Central Kitchen is taking on some of DC’s biggest challenges today while crafting the programs that will meet the evolving economic and nutritional needs of our region in the future. Let’s keep pushing, together.