Community Food Access Mobile Program
Everyone deserves a seat at the TABLE. Together Accessing Better Local Eats (TABLE) is our community food access program dedicated to ensuring families stay full. We bridge the gap between food surplus and community needs by partnering with local businesses to collect and distribute food to those facing insecurity. Our team ensures equitable food access, providing meals through mobile distribution and local drop-off points.
Visit our Services page to learn more!
Maternal and Baby Essentials Support
NEST – Newborn and Expecting Support Tribe – is a compassionate program dedicated to supporting mothers, caregivers, and newborns by offering families essentials and care as they welcome new life. Through our mobile van service, NEST provides starter kits and maternal care supplies to ensure families have what they need for a healthy beginning.
Visit our Services page to learn more!
Our Guiding Principles
- Equity in Access: Basic needs are a right, not a privilege
- Ethical Storytelling: Sharing and documenting stories responsibly
- Dignity-Centered: We serve with empathy and without judgment
- Community Voice: We partner with and amplify the communities we serve
- Whole Family Wellbeing: Wraparound care that uplifts families
Mission
IDO exists to meet people where they are and remove structural and systemic barriers to well-being for underserved families. Through direct food-access and maternal and child health support, we meet urgent needs with immediacy, care, and clarity. We also believe that true equity comes from honoring lived experience. Our narrative hub aims to amplify voices often excluded from public discourse. By documenting lived experiences and framing them with ethical rigor, we create a record that respects dignity, resists exploitation, and positions community knowledge as essential to collective understanding.
Vision
We envision a future where seeking help carries no shadow of shame, where the wisdom of community is honored as truth, and where no child or family must wrestle with systems designed to deny them. In that future, every life receives care and also bears witness, telling its story, shaping the structures that ignore it. Our vision is to stand unflinching, make visible the people of Chicago, and hold their place at the center of justice and compassion.
Feeling Altruistic?
Volunteer with us!
Volunteering with IDO goes beyond making a difference—it’s about contributing your precious time and skills, empowering individuals and communities alike to help drive impactful projects. With your capacity to give, together we will tackle pressing domestic challenges, working to build greater equitable opportunities and accessibility.
Served Communities in
Trusted Partners
