The coronavirus pandemic was in its early stages but Heather Ochoa already had noticed the need for food was growing. She began laying out food from her pantry and extra groceries on a table in her driveway in Oakley, California to help feed those in need. Social media posts and word-of-mouth helped spread the word that Ochoa, a mother of four, who had been laid off from her job at a local school, almost always had food to spare.
When her homeowners association cited her for having food on the porch, almost 1,850 community members signed a petition supporting her work. Ochoa now has a shorter, less visible table and at an HOA hearing set for later this month she intends to request a humanitarian exception so she can keep her pantry during the pandemic.
“Heather Ochoa has selflessly volunteered to organize a food pantry at her home for those in need during these unprecedented times of this pandemic,” Jeanne Reeves wrote in the petition she launched three months ago. “We support Heather in this act of selfless kindness 100% and we do not want her cited or asked to change her set up for providing this food to our community.”
Realizing many of the city’s older residents did not drive or have the means to get to the church, and others could not make it during giveaway hours, the young mom began a delivery service to distribute the food. Ochoa’s pantry and her food deliveries to those who couldn’t come to her has been so successful, that she now has her own Facebook group, “The pantry … Where God guides, He provides,” to share news about her daily food giveaways. A nonprofit by the same name is also in the works and friends have started a GoFundMe page to help with legal expenses.
Every day Ochoa picks up donations of food that is about to expire from stores and bakeries, which she either delivers to those who need it or adds to her porch pantry, open daily from 1 to 8 p.m. She has regular stops on different days, bringing food to elderly families in Brentwood and Bethel Island and to families with children. In addition to delivering to individuals, Ochoa often visits area homeless encampments to give out leftover food and, sometimes, can openers.
Ochoa said she and others, including churches and nonprofits, “work in unity with each other.” So when the others have leftovers, she often picks them up to add to her pantry, and when they’re out of food they may send clients to her.
“Driving around to Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pittsburg, Antioch and Concord — that’s what I do,” she said. “I love going to their houses and meeting them and giving them food. Not everyone can afford a car…. I help a lot of families that are cancer-stricken or have an illness, are disabled or elderly. Some can’t afford groceries for a week or they can’t apply for food stamps or government help. There are so many outlets out there,” Ochoa said. “There is no reason for anyone to be hungry anymore.”
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As freezing temperatures gripped the US, Texas was left in crisis with thousands left without electricity and heat from an overwhelmed power grid and running water due to burst pipes. Plumbers in Houston have been overwhelmed since the storm wreaked havoc in many parts of the state. A New Jersey plumber saw “a call for help” from Texan plumbers on Facebook, who said they were being overwhelmed by 150 to 200 calls each day. He decided to help so he drove to Houston with a truck full of tools and got to work.
Andrew Mitchell, his wife Kisha Pinnock, and their 2-year-old son, and his apprentice, drove 22 hours from their home in Morristown, N.J., to fix burst pipes for residents of Houston. Before leaving the northeast, the couple bought $2,000 worth of plumbing supplies since they were scarce in Texas. The group arrived in Houston and their first repair was for Pinnock’s sister, who lives in Humble, Texas. She connected them with several neighbors who had been looking to hire plumbers. They quickly enlisted the services of Mitchell’s Plumbing & Heating.
“By the time we got here there were already about four or five jobs lined up from my sister, and we just hit those first and then everything after that has really just referrals from the initial customers, like their friends and family.” Kish Pinnock said once they arrived her husband has been working nonstop locating the damage in collapsed ceilings, frozen walls and – in one harrowing episode – working beside snake eggshells in a crawl space.
Among those relieved to find help was Dedrick Dock of Spring, Texas. He said he’d tried to get at least 15 plumbers out to his house before he heard about Mitchell’s Plumbing & Heating on social media from a friend’s neighbor. Dock and his family had been staying with relatives for more than a week because of a broken pipe in the garage. “We had to relocate for over a week because we needed to get someone out there,” he said. “And of course, with the plumbers here they were already overwhelmed with the work that was going on.”
The group had planned to return home after a week, but Mitchell decided to work until he ran out of material and is considering a return trip to the area if plumbers are still overwhelmed. “Last night, Andrew did not get back home until two in the morning and he was out of here by 07:30 this morning. He’s always been dedicated to his craft” Pinnock says. “A lot of the people we’ve helped were telling us they either can’t get a plumber on the phone or – if they do get one on the phone – the wait to be serviced is three to four weeks out, so they can’t have water during that entire time,” said Pinnock.
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Like millions of others, during the pandemic, Sofia Moncayo was furloughed from her job at a construction company but despite her own plight, she decided to help. In March 2020, a food distribution started in her New York City neighborhood and within a month, Moncayo took the reins of the food distribution program run through the Mosaic West Queens Church and expanded it to serve hundreds of people.
Through the program, dozens of volunteers distribute more than 1,000 boxes of food to families twice a week. “I think helping others has to do something to your brain chemically because if we had not being doing everything that we’re doing, I think this would have been a much scarier time,” she said. “Being able to dig in and help others, it really gives you perspective and helps you believe that you’re going to be OK too.”
Moncayo remains unemployed and she and her husband currently owe five months of rent for their martial arts studio in their New York City neighborhood. Most of the food is donated by a neighborhood restaurant and other sources. There’s also been help from the Farmers to Families Food Box Program overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Moncayo also continues to lead fundraisers to help those affected by the pandemic.
Many of the volunteers who joined in the food distribution she runs also lost their jobs during the pandemic. They’ve found a way to give back to their community during this difficult time and make sure everyone in need feels welcomed.
Sunnyside resident Carol Sullivan lost her stage manager job when Broadway theaters closed because of the virus. She was hesitant at first about receiving food from a pantry, but she said that Moncayo and the other volunteers made her feel welcome. “It has been a link to the community that I didn’t have before and it also saves a lot of anxiety over having to have money to pay for food over having to pay for the bills.” Sullivan said.
Moncayo comes from a humble background. Along with her family, she used to get in line in such pantries in order to have some food to eat. While things are uncertain for her, she still wants to give it back to the institution that helped her live and become who she is. “One of the things that we wanted to make sure is that we don’t look at people on the pantry line as people that need food, and really focus on, ‘hey, these are our neighbors.”
Residents in need have been able to pick up a wide variety of food items from the pantry such as canned food, fruit, vegetables, pasta, and prepackaged goods. Other items include baby diapers and infant formula. The organizers of the Sunnyside food pantry have been recognized by an international non-profit organization for their hard work. Several were named recipients of the Neighborhood Everyday Hero Award by the Kiwanis International Queens West Division for providing food to struggling residents throughout the pandemic. The award recognizes people who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help residents during the COVID-19 shutdowns without expecting anything in return.
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As temperatures dipped and snow fell, a 10-year-old boy decided to thank the front-line heroes battling the relentless coronavirus pandemic by clearing snow off their cars outside a Rhode Island hospital. He joined his mother’s friend Abbey Meeker in the bitter cold and cleaned off dozens of vehicles across the hospital’s parking lot as the massive winter storm slammed their state.
Christian Stone said “I was thinking they’ve been helping us a lot through this whole pandemic, and I figured why don’t we help them, you know? All day, every day the nurses here, they deal with the pandemic like COVID and they want to get home from work, so we thought we would make it a tiny bit easier for them by cleaning off their cars for them,” he said.
Meeker said it was Christian who came up with the idea after the last winter storm. “Christian wanted to do something good for nurses about a month ago when it stormed and he said next time it snowed, he wanted to clean cars off for nurses because of COVID. I told him I would come with him.” Meeker said she’s known Christian’s mom since grade school and thinks of him as a little brother. “Christian is wise beyond his years,” she said. “He’s my little partner in crime.”
Meeker said he always likes to help people and had been shoveling neighbors’ driveways for free before they went to the hospital. They headed to the Westerly Hospital at around shift change, when doctors, nurses and other staff members were walking to the parking lot. “We kind of made it a game.” When drivers used their remotes to start or unlock their cars, the duo would rush over to the car and clean it off as quickly as possible.
Christian said the nurses and other workers who came out to find the surprise and free car-cleaning service were really grateful. “It’s been cold but extremely fun seeing how happy they get. Some of them say, ‘Thank you so much,’ and I’m just really happy to see them happy. I feel like I actually helped someone out and that’s a really good feeling, when you know someone has been helped out. We want them to be able go home and see their family after a long day of work.”
Meeker said they ended up cleaning off about 80 cars in four different employee parking lots. Some people offered to pay, but they didn’t want the money. Meeker said Christian did get $20 because two insistent nurses told him they’d be mad if he didn’t accept it. Meeker admitted she really hates the snow and that they had to change clothes twice because they would get soaking wet in the freezing cold but she sucked it up because she knew how much it meant to Christian.
While the frontline workers at Westerly Hospital were blessed with Christian’s kind heart during this past storm, it’s clear Christian is blessed with someone like Meeker who encourages his kind heart and helps him see that even at the tender age of 10, he can make a difference in someone else’s day.
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A San Antonio TX community has rallied behind a 94 year old veteran, Alfred Guerra, after his home fell into disrepair. Guerra’s son and daughter had been able to keep up with home repairs but it became uninhabitable after his son, who had torn out much of the interior during the remodel, suddenly passed away from cancer last summer. Hoping to harness the power of social media, his daughter, Maria, reached out via Facebook to ask for help. It wasn’t long before a variety of veterans groups heard about the man who had earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for acts of bravery in World War II.
First to answer the call was the Military Order of the Purple Heart, followed soon after by Broken Warriors’ Angels, a local nonprofit serving San Antonio veterans and their families, along with the VFW Post 76, and the city’s Department of Human Services and Department of Military Affairs. “As combat warriors, we leave nobody behind. And as veterans, we leave no veteran behind,” Tony Roman, of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.
Mr. Guerra had moved in with Maria and was thrilled that the repairs were underway once again—but then the COVID-19 lockdown put the project on hold. Thankfully, this month, work on the house has resumed. Veteran volunteers who had served in three foreign conflicts—Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam—arrived on the scene and worked as a team to gut the home’s interior and prep it for the next phase of the home makeover.
A new roof had been donated by the SRS Raise the Roof Foundation, and the electrical and plumbing systems are on their way to being updated. They are still in need of an HVAC system and the family is hoping for another guardian angel to come through there as well. They’ve set up a GoFundMe page with a modest $5,000 goal to help finance the much-needed repairs.
It may take another month or so to complete the project but more than anything else, Guerra yearns to move back into his home. He longs to tend the roses he named in honor of his late wife, Emma, in their garden. “It’s a wonderful thing,” said Maria Guerra, his daughter. “It’s a mission of mercy.” She said her father, who has been living with her for the past several months, has missed his home so much that at times, he cries.
Tony Roman said what’s been done has taken the generosity of all those who donated their time and skills to the effort, and he hopes that a company will do the same by donating heating and air conditioning for the small home.
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When the pandemic ground life to a halt in New York City, restaurateur Luca Di Pietro had to close four of his five restaurants on March 15. After a friend offered to pay for meals offered to pay for meals prepared by Di Pietro’s restaurant to be delivered to a New York City hospital. He immediately wanted to do the same for the hospital that treated his son years earlier.
After that first delivery Di Pietro thought, “if there is such a need from the emergency room workers, maybe this could help save my restaurant while we do something good for the emergency room workers,” he said. Di Pietro reached out to other hospitals in New York City to continue deliveries and shared his plans with friends. From that point forward, orders for hospital workers began to flood in to his restaurant.
To organize the ordering process and manage donations, Di Pietro created Feed the Frontlines NYC, a for-profit initiative, to raise funds for his restaurant, Tarallucci e Vino, as well as other local restaurants and to provide hospital workers in the country’s hardest hit city with free and delicious food. Di Pietro and his team have become known as the “lasagna guys” among New York City’s frontline workers. Di Pietro and his team have helped deliver more than 157,000 meals to healthcare workers amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Supported by generous donations, Feed the Frontlines NYC works with local restaurants to prepare and deliver meals to fellow New Yorkers and has enabled many restaurants to rehire employees who had been laid off.
While most of his restaurants remain closed, he was able to rehire 135 of his own workers. Di Pietro partnered with other restaurants in New York City and lower Westchester County, New York-enabling them to pay their bills and rehire employees as well. In partnership with Di Pietro, the restaurants receive a portion of the donations to make and deliver meals to local hospitals. Each restaurant is given a different amount of money depending on how many meals it can make and deliver each week, Di Pietro says. The restaurant owners coordinate their deliveries with local hospitals and send meals themselves.
Feed the Frontlines has been feeding local hospital workers fighting the pandemic while helping to keep participating restaurants running and their workers employed.“We have … restaurants helping us and delivering food so they can keep their lights on,” Di Pietro says. “It’s morphed into something that I didn’t expect, but I’m very happy to be able to put together supply and demand.”
So far the Feed the Frontlines NYC initiative has raised over $1.26 million to pay for meals, and its success has even inspired others to create their own Feed the Frontlines initiatives in other cities. One of Pietro’s family friends started Feed the Frontlines Marin, that services an enclave in the San Francisco Bay Area. The operations team at Divieto Ristorante started Feed the Frontlines Miami after learning of Di Pietro’s initiative. Shawn Wilson, co-owner of Shed’s BBQ and Viga Eatery, started Feed the Frontlines Boston.
One man’s idea had inspired and enabled others to keep their businesses open while helping show appreciation for frontline workers. The pandemic has greatly changed not only Di Pietro’s business but the whole restaurant industry, perhaps permanently. Di Pietro said “This is keeping the lights on for us and others. Otherwise, there would be no business. And with rent due and salaries, for all the personnel basically living paycheck to paycheck, they’re so happy to come in and work on this because everyone is impacted, and they’re happy to be receiving a full salary. It’s been very humbling and it’s been good.”
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IKEA Group has always been environmentally conscious and their latest move of purchasing of 11,000 acres of forest in Georgia that looked like it would be lost to development, shows their continued commitment. The purchase was made to ensure it remains intact and working to suck up CO2 from the atmosphere, the forest was bought by IKEA as part of a strategy to reduce more carbon than it creates through its value chain.
The working forest in the Altamaha Basin is now owned by the IKEA subsidiary, Ingka Group, which has worked with The Conservation Fund, a non-profit that has protected over 8-million acres of forests in the U.S. from fragmentation and development. A working forest is one in which lumber is harvested and regrown—and it’s these forests which often suffer from being broken up into smaller segments and developed, something the Conservation Fund and Inka are ensuring will not happen by creating permanent easements that legally prevent the forest from ever being split up into smaller pieces.
Ingka Group currently owns 616,000 acres of such forests in the U.S. and Europe, while privately choosing to ensure the highest international standards for good forest management. A spokesperson added that “no significant amount” of wood from the forests is currently used in Ikea products.
“Well-managed forests provide essential benefits, including clean water and important wildlife habitat, as well as mitigating climate change. The transfer of these lands to Ingka Investments completes our Working Forest Fund process, through which we identify and buy important, at-risk private forests; develop sustainable harvest and restoration plans; and secure permanent conservation protections to block fragmentation and development,” said Larry Selzer, President and CEO of The Conservation Fund.
Forest stewardship is just one way that the world’s largest furniture outlet is trying to become a carbon-neutral company. They recently announced they would begin buying used IKEA furniture from customers for resale, while electric vans and less carbon-emitting materials are used in both packaging and product. They are also committed to the goal to only use renewable and recycled materials in their products by 2030 and reducing the total IKEA climate footprint by an average of 70% per product, by 2030.
IKEA’s Sustainability Strategy outlines their belief that climate change is no longer a distant threat, but a visible reality and one of the biggest challenges that humanity faces. The IKEA People & Planet Positive strategy describes the sustainability agenda and ambition for everyone in the IKEA franchise system. They say the purpose of the strategy is to inspire, activate and lead others in decision-making and goal setting so that together we can achieve the positive changes we want to see in the world.
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A program in Indiana is allowing truck drivers to donate rejected food deliveries to charity. Truck drivers will often arrive at a grocery store to drop off several pallets of ordered food only to have the products rejected by the supermarkets because there was either an error in the ordering process; the food was cosmetically damaged in transit; there were equipment failures en-route that caused delay; or a variety of other reasons. This often results in tons of edible food being dumped into a landfill.
Instead of letting thousands of pounds of food continue to go to waste, the Indy Hunger Network charity created their Food Drop program which connects truck drivers with nearby food banks that can put the products to good use. In addition to helping to feed the hungry during a time that food banks across the US are reporting record numbers, the program also benefits the drivers by saving them from having to pay expensive landfill fees, providing them with a tax deduction for donated goods, and helping them to offload the cargo.
The program was initially launched in 2017 to operate solely out of Indianapolis and charity workers say that they documented over 90,000 pounds of food donated within the first six months. The program’s success led Indy Food Network to expand the initiative to several more food banks across Indiana. If the Food Drop project continues to prove itself effective, then the charity hopes to expand the program to other states as well.
Drivers are only asked to donate groceries that are still edible, non-alcoholic, and individually packaged with unbroken seals. The Indy Hunger Network works with community centers, food pantries, churches, and schools in the area with the goal of connecting drivers to fill the food shortage needs. They continue to look for new opportunities to improve the food assistance system.
They also run a grant program to award small grants to food pantries in Marion County for projects that would increase capacity, improve operations, and implement best practices. Each year they award grants to over 20 partners involved in the food assistance system.
The National Guard had been assisting Indiana’s emergency food bank system but their temporary deployment will be ending, leaving an urgent need for volunteers. People can visit https://www.in.gov/fssa/dfr/operation-food/ to sign up or go to https://www.indyhunger.org/ to find a list of locations in need of volunteers.
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For the past seven years, students from the Palma School in Salinas, California have been part of a book club at Soledad State Prison. Jim Micheletti and Mia Mirassou founded the book club called “Exercises In Empathy” with a focus on compassion, empathy and restorative justice. Teaming men who have been given life sentences with private school students to discuss themes found in literature has led to raw emotions and candid discussions between youths and inmates.
“The students would go into the prison afraid but would leave with a new perspective on the incarcerated men. “They go in thinking monster … and they come out thinking a man. A human being … they’ve done bad things, but there are no throwaway people here,” Micheletti said.
Former inmate Jason Bryant who participated in the book club said that the discussions went beyond plot lines and protagonists. When he was 20 years old, Bryant was sentenced to 26 years to life for his involvement in a 1999 robbery that resulted in a shooting death. Behind bars, Bryant was looking for ways to be of service. It was at the book club that he heard about Ernest Gordon’s “Miracle on the River Kwai.” In the book, prisoners of war created a culture of sacrifice and they called it “mucking” for each other.
“It was incredibly refreshing to have young men come into a space with us and see us as what we are, which is people,” Bryant said. Inspired by the POW’s stories, Bryant and his co-defendant Ted Gray decided to “muck” for a young man. They made a plan to raise money from other prisoners to create a scholarship fund for a Palma student in need.
The base pay for incarcerated people in the state of California is eight cents an hour. Those with an industry job make $1 an hour, which can get you to $100 a month. The inmates made the money working jobs like sweeping, clerking and making furniture. Over the course of 3 years, almost 800 inmates raised $32,000 for the scholarship.
When they learned about the inmates’ plan, Micheletti and Mirassou knew exactly who should receive the scholarship. Before his sophomore year at Palma, Sy Green’s father had a heart transplant and his mother lost her vision in an accident. They both lost their jobs and the family was burdened by medical bills. Green was not part of the program so he was shocked to learn inmates, who he’d never met, had come together to pay for his tuition so he could continue going to private school. “I was mind-blown. … And then immediately, I was just grateful,” he said. Green plans to pay the good deed forward.
As for Jason Bryant, California Governor Gavin Newsom granted Bryant clemency and a second chance at life after 20 years behind bars. Bryant plans to use his freedom to continue to mentor students like Green. Bryant is the Director of Restorative Programs at CROP, a nonprofit that’s working to reduce the rate of recidivism through training, career development and stable housing. “I don’t know about redemption. … I can say this, I know that those of us who have truly transformed our lives are committed to adding value in any way that we possibly can,” Bryant said.
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Two 12 year old entrepreneurs have donated thousands to animal shelters from their sales on a successful invention, the Ornament Anchor. Brothers Ayaan and Mickey Naqvi, who live in Shelton, Connecticut, were decorating their family Christmas tree last year when one of their favorite ornaments succumbed to the forces of gravity. The beloved family dog, Zara, whose tail Ayaan describes as an “ornament missile,” may have played a part as well.
While the decoration couldn’t be saved, the brother decided to find a better way to hang ornaments so they’d be truly secure. Using a loop and toggle system, Ayaan created the prototype and presented it for a school project. The reception was overwhelmingly favorable—so favorable in fact, the boys quickly decided to turn their invention into a potential money-making proposition. “My brother and I worked together to design the product, patent it, create an awesome website, calculate profit margins and did our own market analysis.” Ayaan said.
This wasn’t the boys’ first commercial invention attempt. A previous gadget landed the pair and their family on an episode of Shark Tank. While they didn’t cut a deal, it was a true learning experience. From $1,000 in sales in six hours at a local Christmas trade show, the Ornament anchor went on to be showcased on Good Morning America as well as being featured on QVC and Amazon Launchpad. In one year, the brothers’ invention has raked in more than $250,000.
Ayaan and Mickey are determined to pay their good fortune forward by donating 10% of their profits to local animal shelters. “Ever since I was super young, I’ve had a fascination with all of life’s creatures,” Ayaan explained. “My goal is to help as many animals in need as I can.”
While they’re enjoying their well-earned windfall, the boys admit that starting a new business in 2020 has had its challenges. “Running a business with your brother has its pros and cons. But, we make it work and we’re the best of friends always,” Mika’il said. “It’s an amazing journey,” Ayaan said. “With my brother especially. Just to go along and just us together selling our product is really cool.”
Adjusting to distance learning and other constraints of the coronavirus lockdown wasn’t easy. Through the turbulent times, they say they’ve just tried to take things one step at a time and keep a positive attitude because that—along with the love and support of their family—are what keeps them anchored.
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