How Vermonters created a new way to fight hunger.

MIDDLEBURY, 2024- Filmmaker and photographer Corey Hendrickson will premiere his film, Ramen Day, at the Capitol Theater in Montpelier at 5:00 p.m. on April 16th, 2024. The film profiles the groundbreaking and nationally recognized program, Vermont Everyone Eats, with interviews and documentary footage filmed over several years throughout the state. From church basements to general stores to restaurants and food trucks, Ramen Day takes viewers on an emotional journey, revealing inspiring feats of compassion hatched in the darkest days of a global pandemic. Ramen Day has been shown at film festivals, including The Activists Without Borders Film Festival, Lulea International Film Festival, and the International Social Change Film Festival.

“One in three Vermonters, at some point in time, faced food insecurity during the first year of the pandemic,” said Dr. Meredith Niles, Associate Professor, Department of Nutrition & Food Sciences, University of Vermont. “It’s unprecedented, even compared to the last recession in 2007, 2008. We’re talking about Great Depression-era kinds of impacts ....” The Vermont Everyone Eats program exemplified a grassroots, decentralized approach to this worsening food insecurity, and harnessed local knowledge with incredible success. Vermont Everyone Eats brought in $49 million in Federal funding, and stimulated an additional $78 million of spending in the Vermont economy.

The filmmaker captured many of the prepared meal distribution sites, each one unique but with a shared mission of feeding people a nutritious meal sourced with at least 10% local ingredients. Participants in the program also shared emotional testimony about the value of having a prepared meal; some were taking up temporary residence in motels, often with no access to a kitchen.

The program funding was also a lifeline for food producers, as Tobin Porter, Front Seat Coffee in Hardwick, shared: “Honestly, I don’t think that we would be open today if it wasn’t for the Everyone Eats program.” Near the end of the film, one of the program's administrators, Chris Meyer of Southeast Vermont Community Action and Chester Helping Hands, shared his thoughts on the program's conclusion: “I don’t think we can rest, because hungry Vermonters aren’t going to rest … they’re still going to be hungry tomorrow.” And in fact, the program has not gone away entirely: where the film ends, Vermont Emergency Eats begins.