Cambridge Community Center

Zach Goldhammer serves as the Director of Community Engagement and Strategic Partnerships at the Cambridge Community Center. In April 2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he started CCC's Food and Supply Pantry as an emergency response program serving the needs of families who previously attended the Center's after school classes and who had suddenly lost their jobs during the shutdown. The program quickly expanded from serving dozens of families each week to nearly 200 families a day, four days a week at the height of the pandemic. Zach continues to oversee this program which now redistributes over a million pounds of food, 500,000 diapers, and 100,000 period products annually.

Zach is particularly interested in the ways in which food redistribution sites can help not only address the baseline crisis of hunger but also the related crises of social isolation, civic disengagement, and economic inequality. As such, Zach has sought out a variety partnerships to help build up CCC's capacity for providing wraparound services at the pantry as well as various ways to empower pantry patrons in managing these services. In general, Zach's model for food pantry operation is one focused on solidarity, not charity.