Maya McFadden Photo
“I had my doubts that we would ever get any help out here,” said Margareth, a senior resident of the Rockview housing development who walked from her apartment to a pop-up food distribution site at Katherine Brennan School on Saturday morning.
Margareth and 100 other neighbors received bags of free perishable and fresh foods from the clergy of the Vertical Church and volunteers from the nonprofit organization New Reach. The organizers collaborated with New Haven city officials to come prepared with 500 packages of groceries to help strapped families put food on the table during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Saturday pop-up is the most recent service of the Vertical Church. Since the start of the pandemic, the church has provided food to over 4,000 families throughout the city via delivery or a pop-up distribution site.
The team had a busy start Saturday, serving about 40 households in the first 18 minutes.
The team kept a refrigerated truck on-site to keep the half gallons of milk and liquid eggs fresh. A delivery truck was provided by New Reach to transport to food.
“God bless you. We love you,” Paul Bronson, Vertical Church elder and outreach coordinator said to each car as it drove away with a trunk of groceries.
As each car pulled up to the site, the volunteer team asked the visitor how much they needed. Most residents asked for one or two servings for their household. For special circumstances like residents making deliveries to their neighbors or families, more servings were provided.
Based on each visitor’s need the volunteers loaded the car trunk or back seats with a bag of non-perishable foods like tuna and pasta and a bag of fresh produce like potatoes, onions, and carrots. Each serving also included a half-gallon of milk and a carton of liquid eggs.
“We’re all in this together,” said New Reach CEO Kellyann Day.
The emergency drop-in was requested by the city and Ward 30 Alder Honda Smith because the isolated area houses many senior households.
Eric Bethany, a father of five, picked up two food servings after hearing about the pop-up site while on his way to the grocery store.
“It’s like I was in the right place right time. Any saving I can do is godsent,” Bethany said as he drove off.
While most residents drove through the site to pick up the food, some came on foot.
An hour in, the team of about 20 volunteers served 100 households in the drive-thru. As visitors slowed, Bronson predicted that about 200 households would be served on-site and began to strategize how the team would provide the community with the other 300 bags of groceries.
For the last scheduled hour, the team began making calls to friends and other contacts to pick up and deliver food throughout the city. Alder Smith also reached out to neighbors informing them of the distribution site.
Ten servings were picked up to be delivered to Life Haven Inc. Twenty were picked up to be brought to nearby senior centers.
A large delivery was also made to the Bella Vista Apartments by volunteers.
Thank you to Honda Smith for getting food services provided to the West Side. People think the West side of town is just Westville and upper middle class people, it's not. I grew up on welfare in the heart of Westville, and played with my friends in the adjacent West Hills and Brookside neighborhoods. Most of my classmates in elementary and middle school had free or reduced price lunch tickets. Many elderly people and disabled people live on the West side, and lots of people don't have cars. It would be really helpful to have a covid-19 testing site within walking distance of those neighborhoods.