A friend sent me this poem. I was moved by how well it represents the staff here at Food For Free and all of the volunteers that are helping us keep the food moving.
This week, a record 212 volunteers came out, putting in 615 hours collectively. We welcomed volunteers from Cambridge, Somerville, Watertown, Medford, Arlington, Alston, Roxbury, West Roxbury, Andover, and Waltham. Together, we delivered 3,260 bags of food to 1630 homes in Cambridge and supported the distribution of 16,000 thousand pounds of food in Somerville.
In addition, we expanded our Food Rescue deliveries to include the Cambridge Community Center who just opened a pantry (pdf) and distributed over 2000 bags this week to 750 households. And today we added Healthy Waltham who will be distributing to the public this weekend. As mentioned in last week’s update, we also kicked off support of Vinfen this week who will be serving 50 meals a day to their clients in 7 cities and towns.
I would like to give a very special shoutout to Ali Eddy and Steph Taylor Smith on our programs team. For 4 weeks straight, they have been working so incredibly hard without complaint. In fact, regularly with smiles. It’s hard work and is made more so by the pressure to respond to everyone that asks. We received an email at 2pm today, as we had just sent the last bags out the door and cleaned up the site for the weekend. It was a new client needing food. Steph didn’t hesitate to pull out the bags, open the stored boxes, and put the groceries together so this household wouldn’t be without food this weekend. If you see them, please offer them some special thanks.
And as always, thank YOU for the support that allows this to happen. Keep the love comin’!
