An initiative to distribute bagged meals to people experiencing homelessness has secured funding from Austin City Council to continue at least through July.
The Eating Apart Together Initiative allows the homeless to eat outdoors on their own rather than in crowded soup kitchens. From April 9 to June 5, the initiative has distributed more than 100,000 meals to people experiencing homelessness.
That includes meals delivered to encampments, as well as those served through soup kitchens and outreach centers, which have adapted new safety protocols such as those found at grocery checkout counters, where marks on the floor indicate appropriate ‘social distancing’ in queues.
The EAT Initiative prepackaged meals are prepared by Revolution Foods, a national provider of school meals. Additional food is sourced from the Central Texas Food Bank. Each Thursday a team of 10 city staff receive, sort, and bag food shipments in a makeshift distribution center at the Austin Convention Center. In total 45 team members from the Palmer Events Center, the Austin Convention Center, and Maintenance divisions have participated in the effort.
“COVID-19 has impacted us all, but for people experiencing homelessness the effects have quickly and severely cut off access to food, water, and hygiene resources,” City Manager Spencer Cronk said. “The EAT Initiative gets critical food into the community using the existing assets and relationships of every organization involved.”
Staff at the Austin Convention Center, which normally hosts events but has been empty for months, have been “eager to assist,” according to Taje Allen, the Convention Center’s Interim Facility Manager. “Many staff asked if they could participate before we reached out to them. Our staff felt a sense of real purpose as they packaged the meals.”
Meal service starts at 9 a.m. at Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center, off 290 in South Austin. Clients receive water, coffee, and foods ranging from a loaf of bread to Italian pasta with a chunk of burrata. Sunrise has provided services for about five years, offering food, hygiene supplies, clothing, WiFi, and mail access in addition to case management.
Sarah Combs, Sunrises’s Volunteer Coordinator, said that the food from the city “helps us stretch our volunteer hours and donated supplies further in service of our mission.”
Javier Mondragon, a homeless man and member of Sunrise Church, says he has been sober for six years. He relies on the Homeless Navigation Center for food, access to services like food stamps and health care, and community. “When I first learned about COVID I was worried the church would shut down. This church is home; a lot of people feel that,” Mondragon said.
Mondragon said that he has seen the line of people at the church “multiply by 100 percent,” leaving him wondering, “How are we going to do this?”
At Angel House, a soup kitchen across from Terrazas Library on East Cesar Chavez, hundreds of people receive breakfast and lunch each day. Each guest receives a squirt of hand sanitizer, a fresh serving of hot food, and a bag that includes something sweet, something salty, and the prepared meals from Revolution Foods.
As volunteers and staff distribute the food, more volunteers prep for the next day, when they will again combine the food donations they receive with the EAT Initiative meals to get as much nutrition as they can to those in need.
The idea for the EAT initiative came from The Other Ones Foundation (TOOF), which pushed for more food to be distributed directly under the bridges and into the encampments where people stay. The organization has distributed several hundred bags of food each week, many in combination with their mobile hygiene program Box of Rain.
Travis County is also involved in the EAT initiative. Every weekday Drew McAngus, Senior Deputy Constable for Precinct Three of Travis County, joins staff from Integral Care, loading up a van with EAT bags to distribute at encampments across South Austin.
“When we go out, we are doing it away from downtown and into the outer edges, right on the city or county line,” McAngus said. “Now folks are looking forward to it. Once we build a relationship and trust, then we could start talking about services. Sometimes it doesn’t happen the first visit, and it may take several years before we see progress, but we don’t give up.”
The initiative also partners with Mobile Loaves and Fishes, Caritas, Micah 6 Food Pantry, Central Presbyterian Church, Community Health Paramedics, and Mosaic Church and Bethel Austin. More information on the EAT Initiative is available at www.austintexas.gov/eat.
The content of this article was prepared by the City of Austin Communications Department. It has been edited for length, structure, and style.
