When the Coronavirus came to New Orleans, it hit us hard and fast. Spread unknowingly for weeks in the aftermath of Mardi Gras, New Orleans was one of the worst hit communities in the country. At the Labyrinth with our Community Programming brought to a standstill, we went into rapid brainstorming mode for how we could continue serving the community.
“First we teamed up with our friend Sally Linsdey from the Big Easel Collective to raise money for the food and hospitality workers in New Orleans, by selling off donated furniture from the College Students who were vacating their closed campuses. We were able to benefit many laid off workers in this way, but so many more in the community were still hurting as the covid crisis deepened. We went back to the drawing board for how we could help next.”
“With so many people out of work, and so many others unable to make it to the grocery store due to auto immune conditions, we quickly set up a grass roots food box pantry out of the Labyrinth Community Center.”
We started small with just a handful of volunteers, serving 20 boxes of food a week. And quickly grew to over a dozen volunteers serving over 100 boxes of fresh food and homemade meals every week!
We couldn’t have done it with out our Love-Army of volunteers, creating the boxes each week, cooking the homemade meals, spreading the word, and then delivering them all over the Greater New Orleans Area! We received a few donations from businesses like Big Easy Bucha, and several individual donors gave 100-200 dollars. However the bulk of the donations for this project came from our partners in the congregations of NOLA Wesley Methodist Church and their Minister Morgan Guyton. During a difficult time, this was a really beautiful example of people working together from different communities to help spread nourishment and love!
With such a big space to work out of, we also donated half the room to our friends at Familias Unidas, out of which they fed at times over 500 immigrant families, many of whom weren’t eligible for any governmental aid at all in this time of crisis and hunger.
Thank you NOLA Wesley, thank you Familias Unidas, and thank you all our friends, donors, and volunteers in New Orleans who helped turn a moment of crisis into a great moment of Solidarity