By Kate Daniel, Donor Services Associate
This past year tested the resilience of our community. Our region saw at least 77,800 of our neighbors in the leisure and hospitality industry lose jobs as of October. At the same time, food insecurity rates climbed over 15% in the District, indicating over 100,000 residents were food insecure. We knew we needed to act—and, when we learned about Get Shift Done, we were inspired to address this mounting crisis in our community head-on.
The Community Foundation recognized the Get Shift Done model as a bold approach to address both record levels of unemployment and the rise in hunger affecting our community. We launched Get Shift Done DMV in partnership with Washington Nationals Philanthropies, and seeded by The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation, Capital One, the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, the Bainum Family Foundation, Washington Gas, and Communities Foundation of Texas, to pair displaced hospitality and restaurant workers with nonprofit food providers. The initiative provides a living hourly wage to work shifts preparing food and meals for neighbors facing food insecurity.
One local nonprofit that has benefited from this initiative is the Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB), the region’s largest hunger relief organization. CAFB, like many other food providers in the area, felt the pressure of the pandemic early on, but was able to call on their dedicated pool of volunteers in the initial months of the crisis.
By August, food insecurity rates were staggering, and Capital Area Food Bank had significantly increased its food distributions. At the same time, volunteer support fluctuated with long-term volunteers juggling how best to navigate stay-at-home orders, health concerns and, for some, returning to a new school year.
“This could have caused a perfect storm and derailed our ability to meet the demand, but with the help of our community and Get Shift Done DMV, we’ve been able to pack and distribute more food than at any other time in our organization’s history,” said Radha Muthiah, President and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank, a Get Shift Done DMV and Community Foundation nonprofit partner.
Radha and her team at CAFB reached out to The Community Foundation to see how Get Shift Done DMV might be able to help. The Community Foundation sprang into action, raising additional resources so that Get Shift Done DMV could more than double its shift offerings to support the Capital Area Food Bank through the end of 2020.
In the past six months, Get Shift Done DMV workers have worked over 22,000 hours with Capital Area Food Bank alone. With this support, CAFB has provided 338,770 emergency food boxes since March. Each box provides enough to feed a family of four for up to five days. Get Shift Done DMV workers have also supported the Curbside Groceries program, which brings affordable, nutritious groceries to those with transportation and accessibility barriers.
“Our work with Get Shift Done DMV is important because we’re [helping] get more food to people that need it. Being part of this program makes it possible to provide for our families, while making connections and building relationships with a diverse new group of people.”
-Olukayode Yusuf, Get Shift Done DMV worker
As we enter a new year, much is still unknown about the sustained impact this health and economic crisis will have on our community and its recovery. Feeding America estimates 1 in 6 Americans could face hunger, many of whom will be seeking help from a local food bank for the first time in their lives. While our local food providers have weathered a very difficult year, there is still much work to be done to remove barriers to food access and provide sustainable, equitable, and healthy solutions to our neighbors in need.
“Food insecurity is likely to remain at very high levels through 2021, and Get Shift Done will continue to be a critical partner this year,” said Muthiah.
As we seek to better understand the crisis we face together, we are proud that our neighbors and nonprofit partners can depend on us to provide some aspect of certainty in this uncertain time. With Get Shift Done DMV continuing to play a crucial part, we look forward to creatively addressing our region’s most pressing needs together in the year ahead.