Working together with a number of partners, we are excited to be operating in an additional way during this pandemic time.
Folks are driving and walking up to various locations in the city, with different church and nonprofit partners hosting the events, and leaving with boxes full of healthy, fresh food, milk, canned goods and sustenance for the week ahead.
Here’s how it’s been working. We are working with Jay Baylor, a priest from Apostles in the City in Baltimore, who is aggregating food through an organization called Blessings of Hope in Pennsylvania. Adding milk and eggs to fresh produce, boxes are packed and prepared for shipment. Jay works with us and other partners in Baltimore and DC to plan where a truckload will go and who will “sponsor” it, paying for and preparing to hand out the boxes that arrive.
Volunteers gather and are oriented around safety procedures and an attitude and atmosphere of hospitable welcome for the guests. They unload the truck and get ready for the folks to show up to the advertised location to get their free food.
As the parking lot empties out, everybody goes home — whether with a full box of groceries or simply with some tired but satisfied shoulders.
It’s been powerful to see all the different “players” show up each week to join our own team, whether a nonprofit with lots of people to invite, a church with a large parking lot, volunteers and long tables, or somebody with a van to deliver a few boxes to organizations that didn’t have their own vehicle.
It works!
Recently volunteers and organizers (some pictured below) have included people from DC Dream Center, King’s Church, DC; Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church, Wounded No More, and others.
