October 13, 2020 - Five Months Later

by Ada Fried Wisniewski

We are still going strong into month number FIVE for Feed Thy Neighbor. Looking at the evolution of how much things have changed. In the beginning we were “free food” and “free meals” having no identity and unsure of what direction things were going or what we were doing. There were six people who contacted us through NextDoor app and we delivered everything ourselves and had no help or volunteers. Now, only five short months later, we make 150 to 175 meals per day, we deliver to 20 - 30 homes (including people living in motels who are displaced or homeless), we have an additional 10 people who pick up their meals daily at our new pick-up location, we have several volunteers who help us with cooking, cleaning, preparing, delivery and we cook an additional 25 to 30 meals per day to distribute to the homeless around Collier County. It’s amazing how this happened and how so many have come together and reached out to us to offer assistance with donations of various items including food to cook. We had one refrigerator in our home and one in our garage. Now we have (3) freezers in our garage, a fridge and our regular one in our home. There is so much to be thankful for every day that we wake up, have food in our fridge, a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs and the basics of life. It’s even more amazing to see how our community, Collier County residents and neighbors, have come together, read our story, saw us on the news or follow us on Facebook or NextDoor and help us in any way they can. We have truly grown our community of help to those in Collier county and hopefully we can continue to grow and spread our blessings to those less fortunate than us. Still praying for a commercial kitchen but thanking God every day for what we do have and the ability to continue helping those that don’t.