18 MARCH 5-11, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | have little access to food. “I’ve been through different refugee camps, being malnourished after the Vietnam War,” recalls Nguyen, a mother of three and former product designer and event planner. Those painful memories inspired her to create Kaizen Food Rescue in 2019. Billed as “the fi rst refugee-founded and refugee-led food access organization in Colorado,” the Denver nonprofi t has redistributed over 17.5 million pounds of “fresh, nutritious food” to more than 400,000 mostly immigrant and low-income families since its launch, she says, through projects such as community food pop-ups and food-share programs. Nguyen went through the Colorado State University Extension Family Leadership Training Institute, a twenty-week civic en- gagement workshop, and what began as an idea for a community garden on South Sheri- dan Boulevard quickly turned into something else. “Initially, I was trying to start a com- munity garden, but the four acres were high in arsenic, so I couldn’t do it,” remembers Nguyen. “So I pivoted to a food pantry after volunteering at the Food Bank of the Rockies.” A volunteer told her that if she didn’t pick up the food in time, it would all go in the trash – and she was determined not to let that happen. So she worked fast, and her efforts evolved into Kaizen Food Rescue, one of the largest distributors for the Food Bank of the Rockies, supporting thousands of families across 100 Colorado zip codes. Nguyen says that the organization has been especially impactful for fellow immigrants. “It goes anywhere from Asian communities to the LatinX communities and different West and East African communities as well,” she says, noting that the program supplies a mix of culturally diverse foods, including halal and kosher selections that are not often found at other food banks and pantries. “We try to get that for them and advocate around food justice for those types of products and items that are refl ective of their culture or even religion.” Kaizen Food Rescue has expanded well beyond food pantry offerings, too, provid- ing programs such as Women, Infants and Children ambassador training, CPR and fi rst aid, and instruction on immigration and rental rights. The word “kaizen” is Japanese for “im- provement” or “change for the better,” and Nguyen says she strives every day to have Kai- zen Food Rescue live up to its name. “I feel like it’s an honor to actually serve my community in a deeper way than what charity model pantry organizations are,” she says. “I feel that there’s an instinctive trust because of how I go about this work. I’m actually in the community.” Food to Power Patience Kabwasa believes in the power of healing through food. It’s a lesson she learned over years as a single mother of three, waiting in long food-bank lines and using her SNAP benefi ts at the grocery store. She vowed one day to pay it forward. She made good on that promise in 2015, when she joined Colorado Springs Food Res- cue, fi rst as a volunteer and eventually as a pro- gram manager. The organization was renamed Food to Power in 2021 to refl ect the breadth of the organization’s work providing access to food, food education and food production. “We’re an urban farm that has programs in food access education and advocacy and food production,” says Kabwasa, who emphasizes that the nonprofi t’s work focuses on proving food, while also advocating politically for policy changes improving food access. Food to Power offers a no-cost grocer- ies program twice weekly in its building in Colorado Springs and also partners with eight other food-focused organizations in the area. “We also grow food on a quarter of an acre,” she says. “So we have in any given year 25 to 27 crops or a variety of crops that we grow on the land, and those are the vegetables that get partially distributed through No Cost Grocery and or some of our other market partners,” says Kabwasa, who now serves as executive director. The organization’s recent work has in- cluded creating focus groups, canvassing and working with coalition groups that helped get two statewide ballot measures, proposi- tions LL and MM, on the November ballot to fund Colorado’s universal school meals program. Both passed. In 2022, Food to Power opened the Hillside Hub – the fi rst neighborhood food center in the historically Black neighborhood of Hillside in Colorado Springs. Situated on 3.5 acres of land, the initiative promotes food justice by providing the community with a place to grow, cook, access and gain employ- ment and advocate for fresh food. “We served over 35,000 people last year through our networks,” Kabwasa says. “We fundamentally believe that fresh food is a human right and food for all. We do our best not to create bar- riers to folks accessing fresh food.” Email the author at [email protected]. Cafe continued from page 17 The Stedman Market provides dinner meal kits. COURTESY CHRISTEN ALDRIDGE
