# REPLENISH and Nourishing Neighbors through Community Food Equity

This film profiles REPLENISH, Middlesex County's network of over 160 food pantries, food banks and soup kitchens, which received and distributed more than 4.7 million pounds of food last year. With more than 832,000 residents, Middlesex is New Jersey's second largest and fourth most diverse and densely populated county. While overall, the county is considered above the median income of the state, several communities are considered low-income or persistent low-income communities, and has significant issues relating to food equity and access. Unusually situated within county government, REPLENISH's model allows partner agencies -- including non-profit agencies, municipalities, private businesses, schools and houses of worship -- to serve their local communities and address specific needs like housing, legal representation and childcare in addition to food equity. The film explores the spokes of the REPLENISH wheel, including visits to a partner community center, the distribution warehouse, and interviews with clients and volunteers. This film highlights the important role that food pantries play in keeping communities afloat, pandemic or no pandemic. The American Folklife Center's Homegrown Foodways in Central New Jersey film series is a collaboration with folklorist Sally Van de Water and colleagues at the Arts Institute of Middlesex County where Van de Water is folklife programs manager. The series highlights in three films the many ways that foodways are essential to…

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2022
- By: American Folklife Center
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2024698304/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2024698304?play=1)