What We Do...

The Help Ourselves Project's Food Distribution initiative is a project that has been in existence since 2001. Its purpose is to bring food into poor urban communities where the respective population has limited wealth and access to healthy natural food.

The target communities are along the Atlantic sea-board with a primary focus in the Delaware valley region. Due to poverty, limited education and a lack of healthy-living awareness, these communities suffer the most from poor nutrition habits and are reflected in national statistics when it comes to life expectancy and disease rate. Help Ourselves Project's goal is to curb this problem through introducing fresh produce into these target communities from black farmers in the mid-Atlantic and south-eastern regional agricultural sectors.

The H.O.P. Food Buying Club

We provide our community with the opportunity to purchase
healthy nutritious food directly from Black farmers. To learn
more or to purchase food, visit our food buyers page and
fill out the form.

Why Do We Need the BFFD Project?

- Black farmers in America are under seige and our comunity is losing farmland at unprecedented rates. Many small farms are suffering, being taken over by corporate monopolies and the increasing use of genetically modified, hormone injected and chemicaly altered fod is presenting serious health threats for our people. We have found an alternative to this reality!

- Black farmers have lost 14 milion acres of land due to the conspiring of government and private financial entities, private citizens and public officials. They now own less than 3 million acres of land, mostly in the Southeast region of USA.

- If the current rate of land loss continues at this rate, Black people will soon be landless.

Source: Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association & the Federation of Southern Cooperatives

Black Farmers in America, 1865 - 2000
The Pursuit of Independent Farming and the Role of Cooperatives

Black Farmers Rally For Discrimination Settlement
by Julie Rose, NPR (2010)

Black Farmers to Grow Ethiopian Teff in Kansas
Rastafari Online News (2009)

John Francis Ficara - Photographer
American Black Farmers Project

Eating Organic Daily
The Difference between Organic and Non-Organic Foods

Join Us!

Spread the word!

We need workers for a number of our services such as
the following...

• Food distribution loaders, food packers
• Computer specialists
• Vocational teachers and educators
• Artists

Help Ourselves Project, Inc.
528 South 52nd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19143
phone: 215-748-2278
email: info@helpourselvesproject.org