Everyone Needs Help — Even The Helpers

By the time I arrived at the pop-up New Haven Inner City Enrichment (NICE) Center Food Pantry, 40 people were standing in line on a blustery Saturday morning. 

I got in line, and a woman walked up to me.

“What’s your number?” she asked me.

I told her I didn’t have a number.

“To get food, you need to have a number,” she said. I’m not here for food, I said. I’m a reporter. 

Oh OK, she said. She asked that I not use her name, but she told me that she works at one of the local schools as a paraprofessional. ​“It’s a hard job,” she said. ​“The kids have so many needs and there’s not enough resources to help them.”

I know it’s a hard job. I’ve worked in schools on and off again for almost 20 years, mostly as a tutor but sometimes as a teacher. It’s a demanding job where children can come in hungry, and they become unfocused and irritable as a result. But what happens when the staff is hungry too?

After a few minutes of talking a man joined us. He was a bit older, maybe in his 50s. He too asked not to be named, and he too works in education. He’s a substitute teacher, looking for new gigs.

“I never got to put my degree to use before,” he explained, beaming beneath a salt and pepper mustache. ​“I’m excited to work with the kids again.” 

I listened to them trade battle stories about dealing with behavioral problems and emotional trauma. It’s unbelievable to me that educators, who everyone claims to value so highly, need to rely on a food pantry to make ends meet. 

But not just them. The line was full of people, many conversing in Spanish as they waited for the doors to open. My Spanish isn’t great, but I could pick up bits and pieces about jobs, how big children had gotten since the last time they were seen, how cold it had been lately. Yes, they were in line for charity, but none of those people were charity cases. They were families made up of hardworking people who, despite their constant efforts, still needed help to fill in the gaps. 

Finally, at about 13 minutes past the hour, the door opened. A brown-skinned sister in a purple hijab came out and started calling numbers three at a time. I walked up to her and told her that I was a reporter.

“Give us about 15 minutes,” she said. ​“Then our director can speak with you.”

15 minutes became 30, with the woman in purple apologizing profusely every five minutes. I told her it was fine, that they had more important things to do than answer obvious questions about the need for their services.

When I got inside, I met Jamilah Rasheed, the director of the food pantry. (My name is Jamil Rashad, so I thought that was a neat coincidence.) We talked for a few minutes and she told me the basics: Her pantry sees about 60 – 70 families on average, and up to 80 when the weather is nice. They’d seen an increase in need over the last year, with an influx of people from Venezuela and Ecuador. There were more families with children who were coming for help.

I asked her: What do you need?

“More space,” she answered. Ms. Rasheed told me that they’d been in contact with the city to try and take over the entire space they were working in, within a police substation on Howard Avenue. ​“The space has really made a difference in the community, and if we could get the whole building then we could make something truly special.”

Space is only the beginning. They also need new industrial refrigerators. They need larger cabinets. They need internet access and computers. They need to have nonfunctional equipment removed. 

Ms. Rasheed launched the pop-up pantry in 2016. Her vision is to expand the food pantry into a full-fledged community center where residents of the community can come for internet access, wellness programs and other services to cater to the largely immigrant and refugee population they serve. It’s hard to meet people’s needs when yours haven’t been met, but still they work hard with what they have. 

“It’s not going to get any easier. It’s only going to get worse,” Ms. Rasheed said as community members grabbed bunches of bananas and soap and tissue. ​“We’re trying to give people hope that someone is looking out for them.” 

Who looks out for the helpers?

Click here to donate and learn more about the pantry.