Dear Service Community,
Food4Lives is a nonprofit dedicated to establishing principles of service by leading community-driven service projects that provide vegetarian meals, basic necessities, and heartfelt connection to unhoused and underserved populations throughout the world. We serve fresh cooked meals, distribute life-saving equipment and supplies, and help lift unhoused people back into self-supporting lives. In 2022 we saw more than 10,000 volunteers giving back to the community, and distributed more than 65,000 fresh meals.
We are excited to announce our reopening for this Summer of Service! This is your invitation to include some fun service days in your summer plans, and we have an exciting program of volunteer opportunities coming up. You can bring your friends, family, coworkers, or come to mingle and meet all kinds of new people. Giving back our time and resources brings us together, and gives us a common purpose to see the best in others. What better way to make sure your summer is amazing?
This Spring we have been hearing from many of our community members and partner organizations about lots of Service this Summer, and we are inviting help getting the Kitchen Community Center up and ready for your visits with friends, family, and organizations. This month we are looking for help with a few key improvements to make sure our Certified kitchen is able to host the expected 15,000 volunteers who will visit us this year. If you're able to join us, please read about the new improvements we're making, and if you're excited please consider making a donation of any size and sharing the news with your friends and family you want to come serve!
Summer Service Rehab Plan:
1. More fresh fruits and veggies with 2 new refrigerator units (12,000)
2. Fresh Air and Cool in the Summer with new A/C and Hood Ventilation (4,000)
3. Serving Equipment to distribute quickly and easily in the Hot Summer (2,500)
4. A State-of-the-Art Check - In System to stay in touch with our Service Friends (1,500)
Total $20,000 Fundraising Goal
Read about each of these improvements and how it will transform our Food4Lives Kitchen Center into a Service Hub
Overview
In our mission to transform the consciousness of the world through service, we hosted almost 200 volunteers every week last year. We just kept saying yes when people wanted to come and serve. But to grow so quickly we need to make some improvements to how we operate. These improvements are designed to make the volunteer experience easier and more inviting so we can build more of a community we we grow the services we're already providing. The most essential and urgent of those improvements is to preserve the food that we depend on.
Two New Refrigerator Units
The Difference at Food4Lives is our food - health conscious, cooked fresh, and made with whole vegetables (and love) explicitly for the unsheltered neighbors we serve every day. No leftovers!
Logistically that means storing fresh veggies and carefully managing the high-quality food we're lucky to procure from our amazing partners. We are currently operating on only 25% of our refrigerator capacity, and as the summer heats up we are eager to get back to full capacity.
The larger walk-in fridge is out of service after our 2022 maintenance check revealed that it needs an environmental upgrade so it doesn't damage the Ozone layer - We know the community cares about the environment since our switch to 100% eco-friendly packaging in 2020, so we're excited to make this investment.
It's also the difference between vegetables lasting a week and two weeks - it gives us a much better chance and integrating items into the menu longer, so the food is healthier, and more diverse, since many of our recipients depend on us 4 or more days a week for meals.
Talk is cheap, and the trusting relationships we have with the people we serve has been well earned over time. You can see in the videos and photos they ask us to share with the community how they feel the love in the quality of the food. Tripling our Refrigerator capacity and improving the quality of preservation will give more variety for you, the volunteers to cook and make it taste even better.
For the price of dinner, a $25 investment could impact a hundred thousand meals in the next year. AND, people who donate are 10x more likely to follow through on their commitment to volunteer and make that consciousness of service part of their summer plans.
Hood Ventilation
No Explanation Needed - The Kitchen can get hot and we have an excellent ventilation system that needs a small upgrade. It helps keep the air clean by sucking it straight through the roof, and dramatically keeps the temperature down. Your donation assures that when you come to serve as an individual or group that the cooking experience (some would call the best part) is safe and comfortable.
Serving Equipment
Food4Lives volunteers have so much determination that they have gone to distribute in the face of cold, rains, heat, and even storms. But the regular heat of Atlanta in the summer is somethig we can be prepared for. A $2,500 budget will cover new wagons, tables, tents, and coolers to help make serving easy and comfortable when you and your family come to serve.
We are proud that families trust us to bring their kids to serve, and friends meet to do service together as a fun way to spend time together. But the reality of the heat can be a harsh lesson that may damper the mood or prevent someone from coming back to serve again. As you think of all the things you might buy yourself to prepare for a great summer, consider donating to cover a few items to help the amazing people giving their time to serve. Indeed the secret to building a strong comunity is serving those who are committed to serving others.
One last thing, we're also excited to have a donated vehicle available for volunteer groups that can transport all the amazing food, snacks, tables, clothes, drink coolers, and more. It helps protect the volunteer's cars from stains and it's more fun to have a centralized service vehicle. We will use some of the funds to make sure these cars are here to last and fully equipped to serve, with identifying stickers and easy-clean vinyl covers.
Volunteer Check-In System
Since we are founded by and supported by Georgia Tech and Emory students we are always hearing enthusiasm for high-tech service and it's an exciting way the students express themselves in their service. The students have proposed a streamlined tablet and database check-in system that will transform how we share opportunities to serve and stay engaged in the service mindset we experience during service.
Our Five Years of Service together as the Food4Lives Community has been so enriched by the thousands of personal donations offered generously by individuals, and the volunteer staff are every day deeply grateful that these donations have been given with such loving optimism. We feel very proud to truly be a grassroots community and we humbly request you to consider this chance to make service an even greater and more vibrant part of our lives this summer. Please help us reach our goal of $20,000 quickly so that we can get to the fun part! Once we have finished basic repairs we will announce the reopening of volunteer signups via email, Facebook, instagram, and as an update on this Fundraiser.
Thank you all,
The Food4Lives Family
https://food4lives.org/
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