Tag: deliveries

One Volunteer’s Experience at The Friendship Center

What is three hours? That is how much time I spend building food boxes for senior and home-bound clients at The Friendship Center (TFC) every Saturday. It is humbling and heartwarming to see the program’s transformation. What started as one packer working with three drivers to deliver groceries for roughly 30 clients monthly has blossomed into three volunteer packers building boxes for a dozen drivers who hand-deliver groceries to more than 75 clients monthly.

When the pandemic started, I was working at a local Alderman’s office, where we launched a weekly Call Crew to check on seniors and connect them to resources. These calls quickly exposed vulnerable seniors in the ward who were rationing their food because they did not have access to safe forms of transportation or the financial means to restock via grocery delivery apps. Coming from a nonprofit background where you solve problems on a zero budget, I knew I had to tap into my network. TFC delivered – seeing the program go from me emailing Ross Outten every Friday a laundry list of names of those in need and him serving as both packer and delivery driver to coming on as the program’s first volunteer was a tremendous honor.

I hypothesize that many of you reading this feel similarly about the time and treasures you give to TFC. There is a dedicated group that secures and distributes pet food every third Saturday, which allows us to include it for Home Delivery clients with four-legged companions. Others reading this help TFC by hosting food drives that enable us to build boxes catered to each person’s specific dietary preferences and needs, including microwave meals and easy-to-open cans. To everyone who supports TFC in one form or another, know that your unique impact causes a positive ripple.

-Jesi Peters

About the author:

Jesi Peters was The Friendship Center’s first Home Delivery volunteer and packs boxes for clients every Saturday. Jesi lives in Chicago with her beloved cat, Tommy, and is the new Director of Development for Tree House Humane Society, one of our Pet Food Pantry partners.

Delivering For Our Seniors

Last year around this time, we started getting calls from partners like our local ward offices and Swedish Hospital, asking if we could help get groceries to seniors and other homebound people in our area. Networks of friends and other community supports that were strained by COVID-19 left many households unable to get the food they needed. We took down a few names and addresses, and started reaching out to our volunteers for help making deliveries.

One of our first clients was Bill North. Recently home from surgery, barely able to walk, and afraid to go out to the store, he called 40th Ward Community Engagement Coordinator Lisa Bowden, who reached out to the Friendship Center.

We now serve 11 seniors in his building, and more than three dozen other regular clients around the neighborhood. We also brought groceries to seniors in Humboldt Park for several months while their local pantry director was stuck at home in recovery and had to suspend operations.

The senior delivery program was a “build the airplane while it’s flying” kind of effort — such has been required of so many in our food systems and community resource centers over the past year. We’ve learned a lot and grown in the process, and plan to continue to develop our capacity for delivery where it is needed.