Advent Spiel for 4 Dec 2004: God's Love We Deliver
Dec. 8th, 2004 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynThe people I've talked about so far have mostly been associated with what Americans think of as faraway places. Yeah, the Heifer Project works with American farmers, and Amnesty International campaigns against gender violence and the death penalty here in the States, and the Grameen Foundation USA has programs here in the States as well as overseas, but I think most people from the US who read about these organizations probably consider them charity for people far away. (Not all Americans. Just most.) Given that I work in New York City, I thought it was time to touch on a group of people working right here in New York, doing stuff that often gets overlooked: God's Love We Deliver.
New York City is huge. Not in the same geographically sprawling way as somewhere like Los Angeles (at least, not to my knowledge), but in terms of sheer population. As of April 2000's national census, there were 8,008,278 people officially living in the city. Those eight million people are scattered across five boroughs- Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan; Brooklyn and Queens are located on one island, Staten Island on another, and Manhattan on a third. Only the Bronx is actually physically part of the mainland of the United States.
Since the start of the AIDS epidemic, 80,000 New Yorkers have been killed by the disease, and there have been over 100,000 reported cases.
When you've got a disease like AIDS, there'll usually come a point when you won't have the energy to go out and shop for your groceries. Might be because of the wasting caused by HIV itself, or because of the opportunistic infections that come in when HIV drops your body's barriers, or because anti-retroviral drugs take a lot out of you, but the end result is the same: it gets really hard to make your own meals. And that makes it harder to stay healthy, because if you haven't got decent nutrition, then no drug on Earth is going to be enough to hold off the viral and bacterial onslaughts of your condition.
That's where God's Love We Deliver comes in. In their own words:
God's Love We Deliver's mission is to improve the health and well-being of men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS and other serious illnesses by alleviating hunger and malnutrition. We prepare and deliver nutritious, high-quality meals to people who, because of their illness, are unable to provide or prepare meals for themselves.
The organization got started in 1986 by two women, Ganga Stone- no, I don't think she was Rastafarian, I think that's an Indian name with a hard 'g'- and Jane Best. The year before, Ms. Stone had delivered a meal to an AIDS patient named Richard, but Richard had been too sick to prepare the packaged food she brought him. They worked with a local restaurant to produce meals that could be delivered and eaten, and they and a bunch of other volunteers set about bringing something like fifty meals a week to people in Manhattan who were too sick with the virus to cook for themselves. A lot of those early meals were delivered by bicycle, but by 1987 the operation had moved into a Presbyterian church kitchen on Amsterdam Avenue. The Gay Men's Chorus donated a walk-in freezer, and the Manhattan borough president gave them their first van, and they started delivering fifty meals a day.
It hasn't slacked off since. By early 2001 they'd delivered five million meals total, most of them dinners (they added lunches in 1992). That was also the year they started laying the groundwork for serving people with other serious illnesses, and for delivering frozen meals so that people who still had some degree of autonomy could heat up lunch or dinner when it was convenient for them and their medication schedule. They provided three thousand meals to search and rescue workers in the days after the Sept. 11th attacks. These days, they provide more than 2400 meals every single weekday year round to New Yorkers and people in Hudson County, NJ. 30% of their clients are women, 53% men, and 17% dependent children.
They still do their own cooking, which means that for health regulation purposes they pretty much have to buy their own food rather than accept donations. The home-delivered meal program is the core of their services, and Each delivery includes a bagel for breakfast, a high-protein entree for lunch and a hearty homemade soup and a freshly-baked dessert for dinner - together fulfilling much of the daily nutritional needs of a person living with AIDS and other serious illnesses. For the group of approximately 25% of our clients who need special meals to accommodate individual dietary restrictions, our Modified Meals Chef adapts each menu item to meet individual requirements. They also do nutrition counseling for patients and their families, and advocacy and referrals as well. They're located at Spring Street and 6th Avenue, Manhattan.
I don't know where they got their name, but I think I can guess. The Gospel according to the tradition of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 34-40, New Century Version:
"Then the King will say to the people on his right, 'Come, my Father has given you his blessing. Receive the kingdom God has prepared for you since the world was made. I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was alone and away from home, and you invited me into your house. I was without clothes, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.'
"Then the good people will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you alone and away from home and invite you into our house? When did we see you without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?'
"Then the King will answer, 'I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me.'
New York City is huge. Not in the same geographically sprawling way as somewhere like Los Angeles (at least, not to my knowledge), but in terms of sheer population. As of April 2000's national census, there were 8,008,278 people officially living in the city. Those eight million people are scattered across five boroughs- Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan; Brooklyn and Queens are located on one island, Staten Island on another, and Manhattan on a third. Only the Bronx is actually physically part of the mainland of the United States.
Since the start of the AIDS epidemic, 80,000 New Yorkers have been killed by the disease, and there have been over 100,000 reported cases.
When you've got a disease like AIDS, there'll usually come a point when you won't have the energy to go out and shop for your groceries. Might be because of the wasting caused by HIV itself, or because of the opportunistic infections that come in when HIV drops your body's barriers, or because anti-retroviral drugs take a lot out of you, but the end result is the same: it gets really hard to make your own meals. And that makes it harder to stay healthy, because if you haven't got decent nutrition, then no drug on Earth is going to be enough to hold off the viral and bacterial onslaughts of your condition.
That's where God's Love We Deliver comes in. In their own words:
God's Love We Deliver's mission is to improve the health and well-being of men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS and other serious illnesses by alleviating hunger and malnutrition. We prepare and deliver nutritious, high-quality meals to people who, because of their illness, are unable to provide or prepare meals for themselves.
The organization got started in 1986 by two women, Ganga Stone- no, I don't think she was Rastafarian, I think that's an Indian name with a hard 'g'- and Jane Best. The year before, Ms. Stone had delivered a meal to an AIDS patient named Richard, but Richard had been too sick to prepare the packaged food she brought him. They worked with a local restaurant to produce meals that could be delivered and eaten, and they and a bunch of other volunteers set about bringing something like fifty meals a week to people in Manhattan who were too sick with the virus to cook for themselves. A lot of those early meals were delivered by bicycle, but by 1987 the operation had moved into a Presbyterian church kitchen on Amsterdam Avenue. The Gay Men's Chorus donated a walk-in freezer, and the Manhattan borough president gave them their first van, and they started delivering fifty meals a day.
It hasn't slacked off since. By early 2001 they'd delivered five million meals total, most of them dinners (they added lunches in 1992). That was also the year they started laying the groundwork for serving people with other serious illnesses, and for delivering frozen meals so that people who still had some degree of autonomy could heat up lunch or dinner when it was convenient for them and their medication schedule. They provided three thousand meals to search and rescue workers in the days after the Sept. 11th attacks. These days, they provide more than 2400 meals every single weekday year round to New Yorkers and people in Hudson County, NJ. 30% of their clients are women, 53% men, and 17% dependent children.
They still do their own cooking, which means that for health regulation purposes they pretty much have to buy their own food rather than accept donations. The home-delivered meal program is the core of their services, and Each delivery includes a bagel for breakfast, a high-protein entree for lunch and a hearty homemade soup and a freshly-baked dessert for dinner - together fulfilling much of the daily nutritional needs of a person living with AIDS and other serious illnesses. For the group of approximately 25% of our clients who need special meals to accommodate individual dietary restrictions, our Modified Meals Chef adapts each menu item to meet individual requirements. They also do nutrition counseling for patients and their families, and advocacy and referrals as well. They're located at Spring Street and 6th Avenue, Manhattan.
I don't know where they got their name, but I think I can guess. The Gospel according to the tradition of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 34-40, New Century Version:
"Then the King will say to the people on his right, 'Come, my Father has given you his blessing. Receive the kingdom God has prepared for you since the world was made. I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was alone and away from home, and you invited me into your house. I was without clothes, and you gave me something to wear. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.'
"Then the good people will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you alone and away from home and invite you into our house? When did we see you without clothes and give you something to wear? When did we see you sick or in prison and care for you?'
"Then the King will answer, 'I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me.'
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Date: 2004-12-08 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-09 07:19 am (UTC)