Your help is needed

​Dear friend,
None of us could have dreamed of the reality we all face today. Without notice, our schools had to close, local businesses had to be shuttered, and life seemed to turn completely upside down.

In the last 2 weeks, I've spoken to longtime ONT volunteers who are afraid to leave their homes; a mother who, along with her husband, has just lost her job and is worried about keeping it together for their 2 children; a woman who was supposed to start her job as a census worker and now has no income to pay her rent; a retired veteran who lives alone, with no children, who is glad he can come to ONT, even if it's just pulling up in his car, to see some friendly faces.

These conversations remind me that Our Neighbors' Table is more than just the food on our shelves, ONT has always been a source of community and connectedness. Something we are all craving right now. My late grandmother always had a fondness for lighthouses. In these stormy times, I want you to know ONT is here to be a beacon of hope and light. All of our work over the last 28 years has prepared us to be a lighthouse for our community.
​And now, I need to ask everyone who can, to pitch in. If you can give $10, give $10. If you can give $1,000 or more, now is the time. Join our Breakfast Club to make your donation in monthly installments.

Our priority is and will continue to be ensuring people have consistent, reliable access to food, and, as always, to do it with kindness. To do this we have had to completely change our program operations to keep our guests healthy and safe. After spending 4 years growing our markets, this week we had to close their doors and shift to an exclusively curbside model with very little preparation time.

Here’s a glimpse of what that change has meant in 1 week:

• Launching in 7 days an online ordering software that usually takes 8 weeks
• Ordering 5,000 paper bags to safely package the food being loaded into guests’ cars
• Hunting down and purchasing extra sanitizer and cleaning products to keep our guests, staff and volunteers safe
• Purchasing 2 new floor scales to more efficiently weigh the thousands of pounds of food going out
• Fueling up our trucks for food rescue as restaurants & businesses closed
• Working long hours and overtime to build new programs with less people power

These last two weeks were hard, but now the real work begins. Now we will be serving a surge of new neighbors who face economic uncertainty in the coming weeks and months. In addition to the 600 households we were already serving each week, we've already registered 65 new households (with nearly 200 mouths to feed) just since March 16.

Our neighbors are counting on ONT when they have nowhere else to turn. Are you in a position to help? Every dollar matters, please give what you can.

Be well and take care,
 Lyndsey Haight
Executive Director

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