City Harvest responds to COVID-19
I hope you and your family are doing well during this uncertain time. If, like me, you are thinking about what we can be doing to help our fellow New Yorkers, I ask you to consider helping City Harvest.
Because of the rapidly changing situation around COVID-19 in New York City and the metro area, the need for emergency food is rising. City Harvest’s main priority is to keep trucks on the road delivering food that is essential to the people of the city.
The best way to support their work is by donating funds to help them respond swiftly to the evolving need. Let’s all mobilize to help our neighbors during these extraordinary times. I urge you to join now me in supporting City Harvest to keep emergency food moving seamlessly to those seniors, children and families in need.
The City Harvest Board of Directors have agreed to MATCH EVERY DONATION UP TO $500,000 between now and April 17th.
Here are some ways City Harvest has been responding:
- We are already seeing the numbers of people coming to our Mobile Markets increasing. We held our Melrose and St. Mary's Mobile Markets in the South Bronx last Saturday, distributing more than 30,000 pounds of food, including cabbage, carrots, pears, and sweet potatoes, to nearly 700 households. This week, we are running Mobile Markets in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, Astoria, Queens, and the North Shore of Staten Island, distributing 57,000 pounds of food to more than 1,100 households in these communities.
- We are repacking boxes of multiple types of food, rather than individual bags for our markets so we can minimize social contact and maintain efficiency of distribution to serve more people more quickly. It's an additional cost and requires more manpower on our end, but it's to the benefit of the people we serve. We are packing thousands of pounds of shelf-stable food, as well as fresh produce.
- We have secured 14 loads of shelf stable food (420,000 pounds), and we plan to make at least 2 more purchases of a similar size over the next weeks as part of the short-term response.
- Many of our corporate volunteer groups have cancelled and we are redeploying staff to do shifts at the warehouse and Mobile Markets. We are appealing for emergency grants from corporations and larger funders to keep our cash flow steady as the volatility of the stock market has put many people on "freeze" as they reassess the situation.
- We have partnered with Citymeals on Wheels to deliver thousands of meals to seniors.• So far, more than 30 restaurants have donated over 50,000 pounds of food, and we are delivering this food to soup kitchens and food pantries to help feed those in need.
- We are assessing the situation day-by-day and are in close collaboration with Feeding America, government officials, and other anti-hunger nonprofits.
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