We talk a lot about the sharing at The Nashville Food Project. Many times that looks like fresh produce or local proteins generously shared by farmers or grocers that our team transforms into nourishing meals to be shared with our community. Other times sharing is the donated labor of our beloved volunteers who give us their time and talents to help us prep ingredients and cook meals. But in a recent turn of events in these unprecedented times, sharing also has involved wheels.
Immediately following the tornadoes on March 3rd, our community experienced an increased need for hot meals, and we needed more vehicles than we currently have in our fleet to add routes and deliver food support to affected Nashville neighborhoods. Our friends at a local Nissan dealership heard the call and acted quickly to donate two catering-style vans for temporary use to provide this emergency food support. We quickly outfitted each vehicle with cambros so we could safely transport meals at temp.
Two weeks and more than 10,000 tornado-relief meals later, our work abruptly took another detour when we had to suspend all volunteer activities due to COVID-19. Rather than host 375 volunteers each month, we would need to prepare meals with only our small but mighty staff. And yet, we wanted to remain committed to our goals of nourishing our community as best we can.
Similarly our partners at St. Luke’s Community House aimed to keep serving their clients -- homebound or food-insecure seniors in the Nations neighborhood -- also without the help of their volunteers drivers to support home deliveries. So we worked with St. Luke’s to pivot and hatch a plan that provided a workaround to the myriad challenges facing us all in this time of shelter in place. We developed a plan to deliver a five-day supply of meals, prepared fresh and then frozen, to nearly 50 homes one day a week, helping minimize contact with at-risk seniors while also reducing the number of routes to a manageable number for staff to execute alone. Furthermore, Nissan allowed us to share their vehicles to St. Luke’s staff--a crucial resource for effectively getting these meals out into the community!
Thank you, Nissan. And thank you to our partners at St. Luke’s Community House. It’s a privilege to be in community with you -- each of us sharing in every way we can.
