Buffalo has one of the highest rates of childhood food insecurity in New York, 18%–that’s 33,840 children. With food deserts across Buffalo constraining access to healthy, affordable food, StopHunger has a vision to target the root cause of food insecurity for every family. We work together with families to help provide a reliable supply of food and expand nutrition education and resources. Starting with food drives in neighborhoods across Buffalo, our initiatives have expanded to transform how we deliver this food by creating meal baskets that pair our YouTube videos of healthy, affordable dishes with nutrition information about them and all the ingredients needed to make them for a week. Today, we bring these to families in need across our city while making them with families right there in soup kitchens.
Thank you to all the community members and organizations whose support made our initiatives possible. We have received two youth grants from the Sodexo StopHunger Foundation and Youth Service America.
Our Leaders
Emma Zhang – Founder and President
Emma is a senior at Williamsville North High School. In 2022, she founded StopHunger after learning how Buffalo has one of the highest rates of childhood food insecurity in New York. Since then, she’s secured 2 grants from Youth Service America and the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and has built up a team of volunteers across the city on her quest to help expand access to healthy, affordable food. In recognition of her leadership and community service, Emma was honored with the Youth Leadership Recognition Award from the New York State Senate, the Congressional Award Gold Medal, and two Gold President’s Volunteer Service Awards.
Beyond StopHunger, Emma is dedicated to creating relationships and support within her city. She founded the OneWorld Choir with Bridges from Borders to build friendships between longtime residents and the city’s large immigrant community after seeing how the pandemic left families isolated – especially immigrants. Additionally, she currently serves as President of the Alliance of Youth Leaders in the US’s Greater Buffalo Branch to help bring volunteer opportunities to students that empower them to become changemakers in Buffalo’s vibrant community! Learn more about me.
Alessandra Ferrer
Connie Chen
Athena Clabeaux
Orlanda Xia
“I founded StopHunger to alleviate childhood food insecurity by helping provide a reliable supply of food while expanding nutrition education and resources – earning two $500 youth grants from the Sodexo StopHunger Foundation, helping turn my vision into reality. This initiative began taking shape in 9th grade when I learned that Buffalo has one of the highest rates of childhood food insecurity in New York. 18% – that’s 33,840 children! I also learned how food deserts in Buffalo constrain access to healthy, affordable food. Since then, I’ve reached out to organizations across Buffalo and recruited students at multiple schools to get as many community members involved as possible. My vision was to help give families immediate aid while also creating long term solutions by working together with them and their families to target the root cause of food insecurity.
Our efforts began with food drives I spearheaded to collect 1,237 pounds of food and serving families at the soup kitchen on Saturdays by creating steaming hot casseroles together. But I realized that while our kitchen was a place we could cook together, not everyone had enough to do so at home. That’s what inspired me to go beyond the work we do on the weekends by creating meal baskets that pair the YouTube video recipes we created of healthy affordable dishes with all the food from our food drives that families need to make them for a week.”