Since COVID began, Haven City Church has distributed $8 million dollars worth of food into our neighborhood. When the world was scrambling for toilet paper we were giving it out for free. When the news was reporting a shortage of Clorox and disinfectant, we were distributing it in mass quantity.
We frequently are asked; “How did all of this get started?”
Here’s the backstory.
When Haven City Church started running the Compassion Center in 2017 we inherited the existing food pantry ministry. (See photo below.) Every Wednesday we would create small grocery bags that could be given to homeless people attending a chapel service.
Trader Joe’s
In late 2017 we received a call about extra food that was being donated by Trader Joe’s. We registered with Celestial Mana to be an approved distribution site. They are the third party organization that coordinates pickups from Trader Joe’s. We were able to begin picking up food every Friday and we distributed that food to 40 households per week.
Southeast Baltimore Food Access Initiative
We started to talk with other service coordinators around the Compassion Center. The public schools were working on food insecurity along with Catholic Charities. Our conversation around food access became a coalition of five organizations that were serving vulnerable people in a square mile. We called ourselves the Southeast Baltimore Food Access Initiative.
This group had conversations with our local city counsel members on food access. We were able to work collaboratively to develop new leads for food. Being a part of a local team rather than just speaking on behalf of one organization was a significant step forward.
Whole Foods
It took us all of 2018, but in the end we were able to develop a relationship with our local Whole Foods through Feeding America. This is an organization similar to Celestial Mana, but it is not a faith based organization. They got us slotted to pick up food from Whole Foods on Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday. This made it possible for us to double our distribution size to about 100 households per week.
COVID
When COVID hit in March 2020 we were up and running with food distribution. We had relationships with our community and had some procedures in place. Restaurants were shutting down and donating their inventory to the center. The city began sending food boxes to us on Saturdays and we were able to distribute that. The local bakery began donating racks of bread.
Then we had someone connect us with the local Amazon warehouse. We pulled up in a box truck and received 1,000 pounds of food on the first day. Our relationship with the management team led to more volume being donated. Some weeks were were receiving 55 pallets of food and cleaning products. Occasionally, we would receive pallets of pet food.
The key factors to food distribution is the distribution location, volunteers who will help organize and distribute and a truck to pickup the food. Some of our volunteers work for 20 hours a week out of hour center. They are amazing. We are grateful that God has allowed us to play this role in our community.
If you have more questions feel free to reach out. If you want to support this effort we would be thrilled to have your financial partnership. It currently costs us between $3k-$4k monthly to pay for the truck, insurance and fuel. All financial gifts are appreciated.
