Healthy Neighborhood Awardee: Chef Claudy Pierre, EAT Initiative

The 2020 Impact Award is a special honor for this year only, to showcase an organization who has made a significant impact in their community through direct COVID-19 relief efforts or working to address ongoing issues of injustice and racism against the Black community.

Founded in 2015, the EAT Initiative was birthed out of Chef Claudy Pierre’s vision to help feed and sustain food insecure communities. Since then, EAT’s primary focus has been to inject cultural competency and food education into communities in Pittsburgh and around the world.

Upon immediately learning about the shutdown, and before most larger organizations had an organized plan, Chef Claudy and his team launched into go mode and cooked and provided 15,000 meals to residents in the Northside, Hill District, East Liberty, Southside, and beyond in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. This effort is still active to this day and his team is still preparing meals for hungry families. Chef has produced around 50,000 meals since March 2020 and is working with multiple community partners and elected officials to cement these efforts and transform this project into a long term solution. In addition, Chef was awarded a USDA federal grant that will allow him to donate nearly 300 boxes of fresh produce to local families on a weekly basis for the next two years. Lastly, he has launched a cooking channel to educate families on how to cook the fruits and vegetables that come in the boxes.