On Thursday the 26th of March, I volunteered at the  It’s All About the Kids® Feed the Kids Food Pantry.  At the end of the distribution, they had a few boxes of mixed produce remaining. I asked if I could take some of it and give it to families that I knew were in need.  They said yes. What a powerful yes? a catalytic yes. 

 

I have a small folded table which I put in front of my house and arranged the food and a lot of people reached out to me. The food lasted 3 days and fed more than 15 families.

 

Then came the question, should I remove the food giving table? I took a leap of faith and said God will provide. (Side note: I am not rich and I live paycheck to paycheck. I didn't have the money to buy extra food. I posted about it on Facebook and in 2 hours my friends came with plenty of food that filled the table).To this day the table gets filled and emptied every day. It became a hub for hope. A place to find refugee, vent, and bond. I have to admit I have made more friends “social distancing” than I did in my lifetime.

 

We started marketing the free food to neighbors on Facebook, and NextDoor. It was too hard to update everyone on what's available on the table so we created a group called "Food Giving Table- Lemon Grove". I thought it would be nice to know what to expect before you come. I thought we would grow to be 25 members max but currently, we are over 280 members( each member has a family to feed) and we became not just neighbors but a family. Now, we have 6 admins(all phenomenal women), 2 of them speak Spanish, one speaks Arabic. We also have a team of volunteers to pick up and deliver food.

 

We now have two tables (one small and one large), pantry shelves and two fridges and growing. The tables get emptied three times a day. It’s amazing. The admins once strangers are now bonded in hope. We use what we have from each other for example we added shower curtains( from dollar tree) to protect our goods from the rain. We are blessed by our community, whenever we ask for something they volunteer. 

 

We know it's hard and scary and there should be a thousand reasons not to do it but I am doing it (rain or shine, day or night), we are here for our community in this challenging time. We stay together and we rise together. We are stronger together. Hope is everything. Hope is our message as we continue to grow. I can't wait for this pandemic to end so we can have a block party and celebrate our unity.#strongertogether #tableofhope

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We are celebrating our 1 month with a partnership with Hugs and Bags, a non-profit organization that provided over 100 warm meals to us this week plus some Easter baskets. We welcome any leftover food your organization has or any extra food. The need is intensifying but our community is getting better together.