Every other Saturday, Gethsemane Seventh Day Adventist Church holds “Free Meal Give-a-Ways”. The church sends out emails, posts signs, and shares the news by word of mouth that community members can pick up free food for their families at the drive-thru event. The food comes to the church from Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and the Hindu Society of North Carolina, a collaboration organized by Vielka Gabriel from Wake County Human Services. At the most recent Free Meal Give-a-Way, food was provided for 200 households; no one went home empty-handed.
The Food Shuttle truck delivers food boxes of shelf-stable items, fresh produce, frozen family-size meals, meats, baked goods and assorted non-food items to the church and the Hindu Society arrives with freshly prepared hot vegetarian meals and fruit salad with yogurt. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Food Shuttle has distributed emergency food at events such as the one at Gethsemane Seventh Day Adventist Church as a means of getting food into the hands of those in need. The Hindu Society, long experienced in various forms of community outreach, has become intimately familiar with the mission of hunger relief since the coronavirus hit our area.
Lalit Mahadeshwar, the Coordinator of the Feeding Program at the Hindu Society of North Carolina, tells an poignant story of how the Society got into the business of providing food for those affected by COVID-19. It started when the schools closed and his niece made him aware of the impact on the children who get most of their nutrition from free and reduced priced school meals. He immediately got the Hindu Society involved, and with the help of Vielka Gabriel and Wake County Human Services, put together a program to feed those affected by the school closures. The Society’s program expanded quickly, they hired a chef and started providing meals to the residents of the South Wilmington Street Center homeless shelter. They now deliver 800 to 1,000 hot meals to the Center every weekend. Vielka Gabriel has connected them to other organizations in the community who are working to ensure that people do not go hungry during this critical time. In addition to their weekend deliveries to the South Wilmington shelter, the Society is preparing and delivering meals to other community groups three times a week. Lalit estimates that they are providing 1,600 to 1,700 meals every week to struggling families and individuals.
The response by members of the Hindu Society, wanting to volunteer with the Feeding Program, has been overwhelming. Volunteers come from all walks of life and come to the program for a wide variety of reasons. Lalit says, “What amazes me most is the passion and genuine desire to serve that inspires people to want to help. We are all in this together…we are all one.” One couple who lost their son to suicide began to volunteer to work through their grief. Another woman who was unable to leave the country to be with her dying father due to the virus, honored him with her time spent as a volunteer in the program. In addition to volunteering, financial support for the Feeding Program comes from the Society members. Lalit tells of a student who gave $100 of his first paycheck to the Feeding Program—the support for the program runs that deeply in the community.
Gethsemane will continue to host Free Meal Give-a-Ways, and Inter-Faith Food Shuttle and the Hindu Society of North Carolina will be there to provide food for those who need it. Lalit shared his perspective on the people who serve those in need, “I’m excited to see so much goodness existing in so many people. Nobody is doing this for notice. People are doing it because genuine goodness still exists.” It appears that this is so.