Policy Successes

School Meals for All

Our partners at Project Bread led a successful campaign to guarantee that all school-aged children will stay fed at school and thrive in the classroom and beyond, at no cost to their family. Governor Healey and the Massachusetts Legislature made a historic investment and commitment to solving childhood hunger by making Massachusetts the 8th state to make School Meals for All permanent for the 2023-2024 school year.

Historic MEFAP Funding

The Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program (MEFAP) feeds people in every city and town in the Commonwealth through funding for the four state food banks. To keep up with the demand that has only risen since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Food Bank Coalition of Massachusetts (FBCMA) has been advocating to increase MEFAP funding in the FY24 state budget so we can continue to serve the 1 in 3 people facing food insecurity across the state. In August 2023, Governor Healey and the MA Legislature passed a state budget that funds MEFAP at $35.5 million, an increase of $5.5 million from the FY23 state budget.  

Hunger Free Campus Initiative

GBFB, along with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute and the Food Bank of Western MA, leads a statewide campaign, the MA Hunger Free Campus Coalition (HFCC), with the goal of ending food insecurity on public and state campuses around Massachusetts. For the first time, the HFCC secured funding through the FY24 state budget at $1 million. The legislation, an Act establishing the Hunger Free Campus Initiative (H.1293/ S.835) will be heard before the Joint Committee on Higher Education on Monday, September 18, 2023, and the HFCC looks forward to building upon the budget victory through passage of the legislation. 

Breakfast After The Bell Legislation

The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) successfully led a statewide legislative campaign and coalition called Rise and Shine Massachusetts. The campaign worked with Senator Sal DiDomenico (D-Everett), Representative Aaron Vega (D-Holyoke), and Representative Andy Vargas (D-Haverhill) in passing “An Act Regarding Breakfast After the Bell” in August 2020. The legislation, which was unanimously signed into law, requires low-income schools across the state to offer school breakfast to students after the start of the school day, increasing access to breakfast for 150,000 low-income children in Massachusetts. 

After spending more than three years building the Rise and Shine Massachusetts coalition, which is made up of schools, legislators, and other advocates, and pushing forth legislation, GBFB looks forward to working with our coalition and state partners at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) in implementing this legislation by the 2021-2022 school year. 

Supporting Raise Up Massachusetts’ Minimum Wage Increase

Raise Up Massachusetts, a grassroots coalition of community organizations, faith-based groups, and labor unions committed to building an economy that works for all of us, ran a successful legislative campaign in 2017 and 2018. Their advocacy included collecting nearly 360,000 signatures to increase minimum wage in the Commonwealth to $15 an hour. As a result, the increase was included within the “Grand Bargain” bill passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Charlie Baker in 2018. This bill provides an increase over five years to reach a $15 minimum wage and also implemented a guaranteed paid family and medical leave program. The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) was proud to support the coalition during this campaign and is aligned with the coalition’s values, as we have paid our staff above minimum wage for many years.