Earlier this year, GBH’s All Things Considered featured the nonprofit grocery chain Daily Table as a Joy Beat honoree. Last month, the beloved chain announced they were closing all four of its locations, leaving behind more than empty shelves, but a deep hole in the community.

But on this week’s Joy Beat, we’re celebrating a group of people in Dorchester who didn’t wait for help to fill that gap. They stepped up. The Dorchester Community Fridge is a grassroots mutual aid effort offering free food 24/7 — no gatekeeping, no paperwork — just neighbors helping neighbors.

The fridge provides over 50 people each week with fresh, nutritious meals, and it’s a loving answer to food insecurity. One volunteer, Joanna Ruhl, joined All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share more about keeping the spirit of mutual aid alive. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Arun Rath: Let’s start with your story. When and how did your journey with the Dorchester Community Fridge start?

Joanna Ruhl: Dorchester has, unfortunately, seen grocery store closures before the community fridge started as a project way back in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, when the grocery stores in Field’s Corner — America’s Food Basket — closed unexpectedly. We’ve been running in various forms nonstop since September of 2020, which is when I came on board.

Now, we’re up by the [Action for Boston Community Development] offices on Claiborne Street, but still involved with our Dorchester Fields Corner and Four Corners community.

Rath: Tell us what a typical day of volunteering looks like.

Ruhl: I’m not sure there is a typical day! There are things that we do every day on a daily basis. We have a rotating group of volunteers who stop by to clean the fridge — disinfect high-touch surfaces, make sure there are no spills, and get rid of unpackaged, rotten or unsanitary food — so that does happen on a daily basis. Our goal is to have somebody stop by three times a day to make sure that everything is nice, safe and sanitary.

We have a number of partners who donate, some on a regular basis. The [Boston University] Student Food Rescue Group has been an amazing partner for the last four years. They come every Saturday morning and deliver a wide range of produce, breads and prepared meals. We get calls from various food banks if they have leftover food as well. Last week, Harvard’s commencement ceremony had excess boxed lunches, so we had an hour or two to source somebody to go up to Cambridge and pick those up. Restaurants, other food rescue groups … We have sort of a little bit of a hectic, fly-by-your-seat vibe sometimes, because food rescue kind of works that way.

Rath: Wow, that’s super complicated, but what a network you’ve built up! Does that go back to the pandemic, building up this network of connections?

Ruhl: Yeah, the outreach and connections with partners really did start with the pandemic. Some of that has shifted as time has gone on, but we started once the fridge was established. Seeing the depth of the need in the neighborhood, we started reaching out to everybody that we could. That’s sort of been our ethos, whenever we have time, because we are all volunteer-run — we don’t have paid full-time staff members — so everybody who volunteers with us has their own jobs, their own responsibilities. But when we have time, a lot of that is spent making sure that we are keeping this project sustainable and available to as many people as possible.

Rath: As I mentioned, the closure of Daily Table seemed pretty devastating to the community. Since the closure, are you seeing more people now, more demand?

Ruhl: We are seeing more people, and we anticipate that’s going to rise over the summer.

One of the really invaluable services that Daily Table provided over the summer was their Lunchbox Program, where folks under the age of 18 could come in for free lunch while school was not in session. We know that a lot of families in our community really depend on a lot of those lunch programs, so summer can be really tough for some of those families. We’re really keeping in mind that a lot of folks who used to come to the area for lunch services are going to be looking around for an alternative to help them out, especially over the summer.

Rath: Tell us some more about this space. The fridge runs on this “take what you need, leave what you can” kind of trusting cooperative model. Tell us what that looks like at the ground level.

Ruhl: Throughout the day, folks will just come by and they’ll pick up some stuff that they need, but we really don’t monitor who’s visiting or how often.

We also think that the 24-hour access is really important. We know a lot of folks feel shame around issues about food insecurity and believe that being able to provide is something that affects their sense of pride and self, so there are a number of folks who prefer to come at night when there’s less chance of being seen. We want to support them in having that option available.

Rath: Finally, I want to ask you about moments of joy that you’ve experienced in this work. Is there a particular moment or moments with the volunteers or the families who are being fed over the years?

Ruhl: I think, probably, my biggest moments of joy are actually a bit more selfish. We have a request board on the fridge; it’s a whiteboard with a dry-erase marker because we want to make sure that we’re giving people food that they want, not that we think they should have.

Sometimes, we’ll get a call from, say, the Cambridge Community Center food bank letting us know that they have something on our list. Going to pick that up and knowing that you’re coming with a whole carload of something that someone has been waiting for, has been asking for, is excited for — that’s always really great.

Other times, it’s stuff like … We got a donation the day before Thanksgiving of 72 pies, and unloading that was basically just a huge party. Once word got out in the neighborhood that this was available, folks were coming down very excited, obviously, for Thanksgiving pies, but also sharing stories about their plans for the holidays — who was coming, who they were looking forward to seeing, what their family traditions were during the holidays — and that was all because suddenly there were pecan pies available.

Prices are high, and ingredients for a lot of these pies were out of reach for some folks. Knowing that they weren’t going to have to skip that was really significant.

If you’d like to nominate someone or something for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at (617)-300-BEAT [2328].