In March of 2020, in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic, RTB launched Manifest Love — a collaborative endeavor with the YWCA of Southeastern MA, Youth Opportunities Unlimited (Y.O.U.), and NorthStar Learning Centers, with the goal of putting healthy, local foods on the tables of families in New Bedford. The Executive Directors of these respective organizations – Desa Van Laarhoven, Gail Fortes, Bernadette Souza, and Maria Rosario – decided that RTB would provide free, weekly food shares from early March 2020 to mid-December 2020 to approximately 125 local families directly connected to these New Bedford organizations. Together we grew, gleaned, sourced, and distributed nutritious, organic, local food. We also created new and relevant educational resources, including videos, blogs and letters, which were sent out with the shares every week. Our partners at the YWCA meticulously translated each letter and video into Spanish and Portuguese for accessibility; NorthStar Learning Centers picked up the food shares every week at RTB and delivered them to our partner organizations with love; and Y.O.U. provided cooking classes for children whose families received shares through their program.
Due to the success of Manifest Love in 2020, the program has continued each subsequent year, with new facets and collaborations marking each season. In 2022, Manifest Love expanded on its educational offerings and created the 104-page Manifest Love Cookbook, which provides in-depth storage, preservation, and nutrition information, as well as countless recipes and preparation ideas for most vegetables, fruits, and herbs that participants receive throughout the course of a season. A printed copy of the cookbook is given to each participant at the start of the season and a free, digital version lives on the RTB website for anyone to access. Thanks to the hard work of our friends at the YWCA, the cookbook was translated into Spanish in time for the 2025 season and a Portuguese translation will be coming soon! In 2023, Manifest Love warmly welcomed Sacred Birthing Village as the 5th partner of the program. 2024 brought a beautiful collaboration with Coastal Foodshed- a New Bedford based food hub that helps create and support supply chains between local consumers and local growers and our “Food Access Collaborators”- that wrote Manifest Love into the Local Food Purchase Assistance Plus grant (LFPA), a USDA-grant whose funding was allocated through MA Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR). With this funding, Coastal Foodshed (CFS) provided each Manifest Love share with an additional $30-40 worth of nutritious, local, value-added products every week of the season (see samples of products below!). We believe that it takes a community to address social justice needs, like food insecurity, and pairing up with other non-profit organizations is an essential part of making positive change. Also in 2024, the Manifest Love Food Truck hit the road for the first time, bringing a new mobile component to the program. Regardless of the year, Manifest Love evolves and adapts to the needs of the community, with collaboration and feedback from partners and participants central to its success. Even though each year brings adaptations, the mission of the program remains the same: to feed deserving families with nutritious food and to provide education around this food, including its nutritional value and how to prepare the foods participants receive.
Our Partners
YWCA Southeastern Massachusetts is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all.
Youth Opportunities Unlimited’s mission is to foster youth development in the Greater New Bedford Community.
Sacred Birthing Village SouthCoast is a maternal restorative village committed to increasing equitable and dignifying outcomes and nourishing thriving lives for our BIPOC families.
Food Access Collaborator
Coastal Foodshed’s mission is to strengthen the local food economy by creating a supply chain infrastructure that supports small farm operations and growth and makes it easier for customers to purchase local food.
They also focus on creating equitable access to local food among those households living in communities without enough places to buy fresh, healthy food, (food deserts) or relying on SNAP benefits to purchase the majority of their groceries.
Manifest Love Food Truck Hits the Road….
After two years in the making, RTB proudly presented the Manifest Love Food Truck at its inaugural event at the 2024 AHA! (Art, History, Architecture) June Pride Night in New Bedford! The food truck was seen
by 500+ people that came out for Pride downtown, and served 100+ people hot, farm-fresh food, including personal pizzas with sausage & chorizo from RTB agripreneur Paradox Acres, smoked chicken from Copicut Farms in Dartmouth, mozzarella cheese from Narragansett Creamery in Providence, and caramelized onions from Skinny Dip Farm in Little Compton. We also served farm-made strawberry lemonade, crafted with our own (preserved) abundance of strawberries from the summer. We strive to walk our talk even when we are “on the road”, staying course with our mission, by sourcing at least 75% of all food on a plate locally, and by reducing our waste by using reusable plates, utensils, cups, and cloth napkins. We even collect all food waste we create and what is leftover on the plates to compost back at the farm. During large events, an additional RTB teammate attends and “tables” the event, helping to answer questions about our work and thanking folks for bringing back our reusables.
The food truck made other appearances during AHA! Night in downtown New Bedford; hosted free, food-prep workshops with our Manifest Love partners for their program participants; and even catered a private event. As we gain momentum and capacity with our food truck, we’ll use it as a tool to offer more workshops and attend more public events in our Manifest Love communities. Any funds that come in through the Manifest Love Food Truck go right back into supporting and running the Manifest Love program, including maintaining the food truck itself. That gives the food truck a self-sustaining edge, so we can always get food and education out to the ones who need it the most!
For the 2024 Manifest Love season, RTB grew and distributed over 43,000 pounds of produce grown on-site and CFS supplied over 16,000 pounds of local, value-added goods. Here is a peek at some of the items that RTB and CFS supplied throughout the 5th season of Manifest Love:
RTB
- 43,382 pounds of RTB-grown produce
- 4,749 herb bundles
- 280 bunches of asparagus
- 402 flower bouquets
- 630 pints of cherry tomatoes
- 280 quarts of strawberries
- 140 Manifest Love Cookbooks
- 1,500 ChicoBags
CFS Value-Added Items
- 3,500 dozen eggs (Flying Carrot Farm)
- 1,050 pounds of cheese (Narragansett Creamery)
- 5,258 pounds of meat (Winters Farm, Jordan Farm, etc)
- 980 pints of ferments (Real Pickles)
- 560 packages tortillas (Mi Tierra)
- 630 pounds of honey (Buzzards Bay Bee Company, Quissett Hill Farm, Hixville Honey & Sunny Side Apiary)
- 2,880 pounds of apples (Ward’s Farm & Pete’s Farm)
- 240 pounds of cranberries (Bogside Acres, Hartley Farm)
- 700 packages of dried fruit (Wellness Croft)
- 691 boxes of mushrooms (Bright Oasis)
- 280 tins of littleneck clams (Island Creek Oysters)
Each week we include a brief letter with the shares, outlining all of the items that the participants will find in their ChicoBag that week. The letter is translated in English, Spanish, and Portuguese for accessibility and contains a QR code which brings participants to the digital version of the Manifest Love Cookbook (if they don’t have their physical copy on hand), where they can get information on and inspiration for storage, preparation, recipes, and nutritional information. The letter has changed form over the years as Manifest Love has evolved: take a peek at some of the letters from throughout the years!
Check out some of the letters from throughout the year.
Letters in English Letters in Portuguese Letters in Spanish
The Manifest Love partners collectively decided to reduce our carbon footprint by packaging the weekly food shares in something other than single-use plastic. We decided to purchase reusable, washable ChicoBags because we could collect them weekly, launder them on the farm, refill them with the shares, and send them back out to participants. This also provided an educational opportunity for the participants, with the hope that these reusable bags will turn into shopping bags and be used well into the future. Throughout the season, we also upcycled and reused many packaging materials, such as paper bags and berry containers. In our effort to reduce waste and value resources, we put these bags and containers to good use in our Manifest Love shares.
“ I am so grateful that Round the Bend Farm is providing fresh produce, meat and herbs, and cheese. It has truly expanded our food list, while introducing us to creating more healthy meals and trying items we wouldn’t think of purchasing.”
