On March 19, we decided to close our facility to protect the health of our staff, volunteers, and clients and put in place safety protocols for our essential food operations personnel. Like many in our community, we thought this would be a short-lived shutdown and our programs would be back to normal in a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, that has not been the case and six months later, we continue to pivot to meet the needs of the people who have been negatively impacted by the pandemic.
We continue to provide healthy food through our curbside model with boxes of dry goods, dairy, produce, meat, and eggs. Serving nearly 1,000 families a week, we are meeting the increased demand through the hard work of our staff and we are accomplishing this with 80% fewer volunteers than before the pandemic!
As the weather gets colder and our days get shorter, the staff of Loaves & Fishes are developing plans to continue to meet the emergency food needs of the community. We have slowly begun to open our building to limited client appointments. We have also restarted applications for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), as well as job and legal counseling.
Our Emergency Assistance Program is more critical than ever. Since the additional unemployment benefits expired at the end of July, our calls for financial assistance have doubled. Pre-COVID our CARES team included 40 volunteers a week, we now have a wonderfully dedicated team of 10 volunteers, working both remotely and in person.
With COVID restrictions in place, our Car Program volunteer team has figured out a safe way to take in donated cars, have them repaired, and provided them to individuals to maintain employment, which is particularly vital now.
I am honored to be a part of an organization that has such a dedicated, hard-working staff and volunteers who continually make adjustments to help us end hunger and transform lives.
