Our Origin:
In the United States, where almost half of our food is literally thrown out every day nationwide, one demographic exists that is especially susceptible to starvation: people living with HIV/AIDS. Even here in Kentucky, a state celebrated for its culinary spectrum, the late African American artist, Charles Williams, died in 1998, not because he’d been living with the virus, but due to starvation. Williams, born in Blue Diamond Kentucky, created a vast body of diverse work making a significant impact on the local art community. Williams lived in downtown Lexington, just a few blocks from City Hall.
Later that year, Williams’s needless death motivated the late Michael Thompson, a well-known HIV/AIDS activist along with Carol Farmer, to deliver leftover food from local restaurants to people they knew in similar need. With the help of other friends and activists along with the Episcopal Aids Ministry and the inspiration of similar organizations in Atlanta and Baltimore, MFL raised enough funding to remodel St. Augustine Chapel on UK’s campus to serve as their first kitchen.
After a move to St. Martha’s Episcopal Church in 2005, in April 2008, the organization moved to a building on the corner of Fifth Street and Silver Maple Way, a fixer-upper formerly known as “Nanny’s Soul Food,” a favorite local restaurant before it closed. The newly renovated commercial-sized kitchen, which was originally built as a grocery store in the 1890s, would henceforth serve as Moveable Feast Lexington's permanent home.