Meet
the Boston Food Access Council
Meet Liz Miller (left), Co-Chair of the Boston Food Access Council (BFAC) Steering Committee and Musu-kalla Massaquoi (right), BFAC Steering Committee member.
The Boston Food Access Council (BFAC) brings community and stakeholder voices together to create access to affordable, just, culturally connected, healthy, and sustainable food in Boston. BFAC is a close partner of the Neighborhood Food Action Collaborative (NFAC), our food access initiative. We sat down with BFAC Steering Committee members Liz Miller and Musu Massaquoi to talk about BFAC’s origin story, its evolution over the years, and their vital role in advocating for food security and access to help all of Boston’s communities thrive.
Liz, a local Bostonian, attributes her initial interest in food work to her family’s love of food and her own interest and involvement in the restaurant world. However, her approach shifted to focusing on food justice during her time as an AmeriCorps volunteer, which made her realize that the idea of food purely for enjoyment was a luxury as many people have trouble accessing enough food to survive. This realization launched her into a career in the nonprofit and government sectors, which eventually led her to join Spoonfuls, a Massachusetts-based food recovery organization. Liz has been a member of the BFAC Steering Committee since 2023.
Musu traces her interest in food justice work to her childhood in Dorchester and Mattapan, where she was raised by a single mother and often opted for “cheap junk food”. These early experiences, along with her own experience utilizing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for the first time due to COVID-related unemployment, led her to joining BFAC. She remembers that vulnerable period saying, “In the position I was in at that time, I was helping families get resources, and then I became one of those people that needed the resources.” Initially supporting BFAC as a volunteer, she became a Steering Committee member in 2022.
“If we’re talking about food insecurity in Boston neighborhoods, people from those neighborhoods really need to be steering the ship.”
BFAC began as the Boston Food Policy Council created by City of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino in 2009. Its original mission was policy-focused in specific areas like urban agriculture, with additional networking and education elements. However, upon re-launching as the Boston Food Access Council in 2017, the collaborative underwent a significant re-evaluation of its strategic direction and priorities. Guided by feedback from community engagement discussions, in 2020 BFAC became independent from city government, stepping into the role of an advocacy organization focused on food security and access.
BFAC has been intentional in deferring to community members– primarily through its ongoing partnership with NFAC–to shape what this advocacy looks like, “if we’re talking about food insecurity or food access barriers in Boston neighborhoods, people from those neighborhoods really need to be steering the ship”, Liz says.
This model has driven BFAC’s focus on meeting people’s immediate food needs during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as more recently supporting community-led advocacy for the Healthy Incentives Program (HIP) under SNAP and navigating an ecosystem with high grocery prices.
Notably, BFAC, in collaboration with partners and community members, recently supported a significant victory. In partnership with and following the lead of the Massachusetts Food Systems Collaboratives Campaign for HIP Funding, BFAC and NFAC worked together to successfully pressure the state government to increase HIP benefits from $20 back up to $40 per month for all Massachusetts families, regardless of family size.
However, importantly Liz notes, “Advocacy is more than just legislative advocacy. It also includes making sure that resources are showing up for people in the way that they need them and ensuring that people know they exist.”
““What can we do to make sure that more isn’t taken from us?”
Liz and Musu believe that the structure of the BFAC Steering Committee also allows them to be responsive to diverse community needs. BFAC has made a commitment to reserve the majority of the seats on its Steering Committee for community members, while the others are filled by representatives from different organizations involved in food justice work. The job of organizational members is to bring the perspectives, resources, and connections from their respective organizations to support BFAC’s community-driven mission. This basic structure allows for the representation of a wide array of geographies, cultures, and organizations in Boston.
As an entirely volunteer-run organization, BFAC faces significant capacity constraints to do the important work that seems all the more pressing given recent federal policy shifts that could dramatically reduce resources like SNAP and Medicaid that so many Bostonians depend on. In response to these unprecedented cuts to the safety net, BFAC has mobilized partners and community members. Their collective efforts include writing Op-Eds, providing live testimony, and participating in phone banking campaigns to fight against these threats to food security and access. As Musu put it, BFAC’s response was, “What can we do to make sure that more isn’t taken from us?”
“Advocacy includes making sure that resources are showing up for people in the way that they need them.”
BFAC is simultaneously using this moment of crisis to be more proactive and intentional in their advocacy. For example, they are working towards collecting the stories of people with lived experience of food insecurity before there is a specific advocacy need. Liz expresses the power of people sharing their testimonials, “It's not just you telling your story, it's you telling your story because it can influence the way decisions are made that could be the decisions you want made, and empower others to do the same.” Both Liz and Musu agree that is BFAC’s ultimate goal: to elevate diverse voices so they are valued and heard. As Musu says, they want everyone to understand that “Your voice is your power.”
Your voice is your power! Email your story - about the value of federal benefit programs, about the challenges you are seeing related to high grocery prices, or about any food access issues you want to raise up - to BFAC at office@bostonfoodaccesscouncil.org. Learn more about BFAC, including how to join meetings and donate.
Written by Briana Acosta (July 2025)