Good In The Hood

[mellowtigger]

A few years ago, a local non-profit called Good In The Hood gave a lunchtime presentation at my workplace. I remembered that among their services was free food delivery on Thursday afternoons at a location just 2 blocks from where I live. I saw the lines of waiting people sometimes when I happened to drive by on a Thursday.

My schedule has changed as part of covid adjustments, so I have Thursday afternoons free now.  So I signed up to join tonight's volunteer shift for the first time.

I walked there to show up promptly at 4pm.  It was a bit early for the actual organizers, though.  There was one "old-timer", me, and one young first-time volunteer.  I spent a few hours putting vegetables into sacks and then into larger boxes for use at the drive-up.  The group followed government rules about food handling, which is good.  They also followed government rules about food delivery, which was weird.  People have to affirm they qualified to different disbursements based on their income and number of people in household.  I'm not a fan of that kind of micromanagement.  I'd rather hand food to anyone who asks.  But they follow the rules to continue qualifying for their non-profit benefits... which is good.

A lot more long-time volunteers showed up later.  Some of them commented that they'd never seen it so slow as it was today.  Part of it was the heat.  We have a cold front moving through late tonight that will make it better.  Part of it might be the curfew.

Everyone's phones started going off at 7pm (pictured here).  Nobody intended to stay until the usual 8pm handing out food.  We wanted to be indoors by then.  So the effort started breaking up earlier than they normally do.  There were some loud pops nearby, and 2 of us local residents noted it.  I thought it was not gunfire, but... I might've been wrong.

I figured the same shutdown must be happening across the city at other food distribution tables.  Bothersome side effect of the curfew.

I came back home with a small box of food too, because they needed to get rid of as much as possible at the last minute.  I suspect that I will volunteer again there.  I know how bad the food problem has been due to the economic shutdown due to covid.  Not that it was great before, locally.  But I'm sure it's all worse now.

So... my thanks to Good In The Hood.  They are needed.

Comments

[mtbc]

Thank you for telling us about what kind of thing is involved when one volunteers.

[mrdreamjeans]

Well done.