How Love Markets Met a Moment of Crisis

The reality is this: crises don't wait for budget cycles, procurement rules, or grant approvals. They come suddenly, disrupt everything, and affect students and families deeply. That’s why we established the Crisis Response Fund.

In late 2025, a federal government shutdown halted SNAP benefits for thousands of families across Richmond. Overnight, households that were already stretching every dollar lost access to the food assistance they rely on to survive. 

And schools became the front line.

When families started asking where they could turn, the answer couldn't be “wait.” The Crisis Response Fund allowed us to respond right away. We launched Love Markets to deliver food and hygiene products to our most vulnerable Richmond Public Schools families at the exact moment federal support disappeared.

In Richmond Public Schools, we often say that we teach, lead, and serve with love. The Crisis Response Fund exemplifies that belief in action. Love, in this context, means a prompt and respectful response. It is refusing to let families fall through gaps created by policy decisions far outside their control.

Love Markets worked because the fund was already in place. It lets us buy food, distribute essentials, and help stabilize households without asking families to prove hardship or go through bureaucratic hurdles. Parents didn’t have to explain why the system failed them.

This is exactly what the Crisis Response Fund was created for. It exists to address urgent, human needs that fall just outside traditional funding boundaries. It is intentionally flexible, quick, and focused on impact rather than process.

Without a reliable source of capital like this, the SNAP pause would have led to empty refrigerators, increased stress, and students arriving at school hungry and distracted by uncertainty. That is the expected outcome when systems lag behind people’s real-time needs. 

The Crisis Response Fund does not eliminate poverty, and that’s not its purpose. Instead, it prevents policy disruptions from turning into educational setbacks. It offers stability, protects learning, and ensures external factors don’t limit a student’s experience.

What Love Markets showed is that Richmond has the partners, compassion, and resolve to care for its people. The Crisis Response Fund turns that collective will into action as quickly as reality demands.

Transforming Richmond Public Schools requires more than a long-term plan. It needs infrastructure that can adapt when life disrupts learning. This fund is not just an emergency measure; it is a permanent commitment to our students and families that clearly states: when systems fail, we will not.