REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH AT GREEN POINT
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Mission Statement
The Greenpoint Reformed Church Hunger Program is a non-sectarian, emergency food program that provides no-cost groceries and hot meals to hungry people in North Brooklyn. Our mission is to ensure that no one dies of hunger in North Brooklyn. We serve all people in need, regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status or faith background (or lack thereof).
About This Cause
While our mission is to ensure no one dies of hunger, our impact goes beyond just physical hunger. When people cannot meet their monthly financial obligations, it’s difficult to change certain fixed costs – rent, utilities, medicine. One area that people do cut back is food – both quantity and quality. By providing food, we provide ways for people to afford other vital things. By distributing healthy food, especially fresh fruit and vegetables, we provide nourishing food that people otherwise wouldn’t have the money to purchase. We also believe that distributing food calms people’s deepest fears of having to go without food. This is especially important because so many of the people we serve grew up during or just after WWII and came of age in Communist Poland. We work to differentiate ourselves from other social service programs by connecting with the individuals we serve and by creating a community of volunteers. Almost all of the volunteers who serve at the pantry and many of the volunteers who serve at the dinner initially came to us for food. They stayed to volunteer because they found the community, and our shared work, to be transformative. We’ve helped several people grow in their confidence so that they can apply for – and receive - paid work. This past year, two volunteers decided to return to graduate school – one to study community nutrition and another to become a social worker. We also provide a vehicle to limit food waste. Many film companies, rooftop gardens, farmers markets, and other food businesses are located in our area. Literally, we help rescue tons of food that would otherwise have been thrown out and feed it to hungry people. Food pantries and soup kitchens are very local in nature. Almost everyone we serve comes from Greenpoint or Williamsburg. We differ from other local organizations by directly providing food to people, which is what is severely lacking in our area. We are the only soup kitchen and food pantry in the 11222 zip code. This is particularly significant because over 26% of the people in this zip code live below the poverty line. The foundation of our work is a weekly community meal on Wednesday evenings, which serves between 70-80 people and a weekly food pantry on Thursdays that feeds between 200-300 people. We partner with the Food Bank, City Harvest the United Way and other organizations and businesses to provide the healthiest, freshest and tastiest food possible. This is the basic work of battling immediate hunger in our city. It does not change the root causes of their hunger. It merely keeps people alive for another day or two in the hopes that transformation may happen. Every week consists of a Wednesday and a Thursday, and every week we feed people. But this does not change poverty, and it would seem very hopeless if we did not supplement this work by addressing both the individual situations that keep people in poverty and the systemic reasons people are hungry. To this end, we do more than just distribute food. We have a Food Stamps Outreach Volunteer who helps our guests apply for benefits. We offer free help with tax preparation so that people can receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. Mental illness and substance abuse are two major contributors to poverty, and especially to homelessness. We host over 10 different 12-step meetings throughout the week and make referrals for individual and group counseling at a nearby addiction clinic. We partner with the Department of Homeless Services and Common Ground to ensure that non-domiciled people who come to us can access beds at the local homeless shelter, which is particularly equipped to support Polish-speakers. We want our guests to eat as well as possible, and so we receive produce from three nearby Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Cooperatives and three community gardens, along with more than 5,500 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables from a farm in Hudson, NY through the state’s Local Produce Link program. We also have an on-site “Veggie Educator” teaching our hungry neighbors how to cook healthy vegetables. Thanks to a partnership with Grow NYC, our backyard functions as a community garden and this past year one of our unemployed (and previously quite hopeless) volunteers graduated from Farm School and has not only overseen the garden, but is now looking for work at an urban farm.