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March 12-March 18, 2021
Salvation Army addresses food insecurity
with food giveaway in Jackson Heights
BY GABRIELE HOLTERMANN
Despite bitter cold wind
chills, a long line of food-insecure
New Yorkers formed
on the sidewalk along 35th
Avenue on March 2 outside
the Salvation Army Queens
Temple Corps Community
Center in Jackson Heights.
The Jackson Heights Corp
has seen an increase of 400
percent of residents requiring
food assistance since the
pandemic started, Salvation
Army Major Guillermo Di
Caterina said.
The Corp operates a soup
kitchen serving between 300
and 400 community members
Monday through Friday,
as well as a food pantry
program three days a week,
providing meal boxes for 300
to 350 families a week.
Di Caterina explained
that before the pandemic,
the soup kitchen served
around 150 people a day and
about 50 families a week received
packages from the
food pantry. The boxes include
canned food, cereal,
pasta and meat. City Harvest
delivers four to six pallets of
produce and dry food to the
corp every Tuesday. Other
food pantry staples are purchased
The Salvation Army Queens Temple Corps Community Center in Jackson Heights hosted a food giveaway
to help feed food-insecure New Yorkers. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
with grants from the
government.
Di Caterina said that they
had a difficult time getting
supplies at the beginning of
the pandemic because everything
was closed.
“We had to reach out to
some vendors in different
states to get the food delivered
to us because people
were hungry. When everything
shut down, it was really
bad,” he said.
Pre-COVID, people congregated
in the oversized
dining room to eat their meal
from the soup kitchen. Since
March 2020, they have to pick
up their soup from one of the
tables outside the Salvation
Army, adhering to COVID-19
safety regulations.
The soup of the day, a
freshly prepared turkey soup,
was paired with 180 chicken
and steak burritos, guacamole
and salad donated by
Chipotle. Di Caterina pointed
out that the group of people
seeking food assistance has
become more diverse since
the pandemic started.
“Asians, people from India,
Bangladesh. It’s very diverse,
people that we haven’t
seen before,” he explained,
attributing the change to
the staggering number of job
losses in the community.
Di Caterina feels that the
situation will improve little
by little now that three different
COVID-19 vaccinations
are available, but the road to
recovery will be long.
“Many people lost their
jobs. And it’s going to be
hard for everyone to get back
to their jobs. A lot of businesses
closed,” he said.
As New York City marked
one year since its first known
COVID-19 case on March 1,
2020, the Salvation Army of
Greater New York has served
more than 7 million meals
to food-insecure New Yorkers
since the outbreak of the
pandemic. In comparison,
the organization served 3.5
million meals in all of 2019.
Vol. 9, No. 11 24 total pages
2021
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