Food insecurity continues to increase in NYC – An interview with Aaliyah, a Manager at Food Bank for New York City

I first volunteered with Food Bank for New York City in July of this year, in the Community Kitchen and Pantry in Harlem, as part of the Grab-and-Go Pantry Distribution program. I had been looking for an opportunity to spend part of my weekends in a fruitful way, and support an organization whose mission I believed in. Through this experience, I have had the chance to register and greet members of the community, distribute fresh produce and pantry items, and meet and work with other volunteers who bring different backgrounds and stories but share similar motivations.

Food Bank has been working to end food poverty in the five boroughs since 1983. At the Community Kitchen and Pantry, all are welcome for a free, wholesome take-home meal on weekdays, and pre-packaged pantry bags of delicious and wholesome food items are available for pick up once a month. Food Bank provides more than 100,000 free meals each month through their soup kitchen, food pantry, and senior program.

Last week, I sat down with Aaliyah, a Food Bank employee, to find out more about the organization and her experience working there.

How long have you been at Food Bank and what’s your role there?

I’ve been at Food Bank since 2018 on the Volunteer Engagement Team. I started off with Food Bank as an AmeriCorps Member, served for ten months, and then got hired full-time as Coordinator. In July 2021, I was promoted to Manager.

Have you enjoyed your time there so far?

It’s been great. The culture here is amazing. I feel as though all of my coworkers are working towards the same mission, but are also very much invested in each other’s professional development.

Have you seen Food Bank change much from 2018, when you started with the organization, then throughout COVID, and now?

Yes, definitely some big changes for us across the organization. Of course, as was the case for many of us, the pandemic hit us pretty hard. The lines were growing, and we were seeing a lot more clients coming to our Community Kitchen and Pantry than we had ever had historically. While it was very challenging in the beginning, what we did as an organization was to take a step back, and assess and understand how best to serve our clients with dignity. The need is growing so things are a little bit more tense, there may not necessarily be the same food resources available, so really just trying to understand how we can keep the line going and making sure that we are best serving our neighbors here in New York is really important.

How do most people initially find out about Food Bank and its services?

We’re on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and we also have our website. As of recently, we have been doing a little bit more regarding being on different news channels, and different media channels, so it’s a little bit easier for people to access our resources and learn about the organization and our mission.

How do people meet criteria (if any) for Food Bank’s services and offerings?

We welcome everybody. In order to be a client, there is a very short intake process where we will ask for their state ID, so that we can have their address readily available, their contact information, and how many people there are in their household. Outside of that, we try not to ask too many questions that would make anybody feel uncomfortable in coming to visit us to get our resources.

Many people are under the impression that the need would decrease now that people are in the situation where they are able to go back to work, and interact with people face-to-face. What we are actually seeing is that due to inflation in food prices, rent prices, and gas prices, the lines are continuing to grow, and that’s a challenge to not only our kitchen, but our overall network of over 1800 soup kitchens and food pantries throughout the five boroughs. (For reference, since the start of COVID-19 in March 2020, the cost of groceries in the New York Metropolitan area has increased by 15.3%). We recently did a survey to better understand how people are doing now that the pandemic is coming to a little bit of a low, and I think we were all hopeful that we would see some decreases in the lines – but unfortunately, that’s not the case. That’s one thing that we are really trying to help people better understand, as well as not assuming that it’s a specific kind of person that is coming to get these food resources, that there are people who have full-time jobs, or are college students, that anybody that you walk by on the street may need this resource.

How many people are employed by Food Bank and how many volunteers are there?

There are somewhere between 150 and 200 employees, and then the volunteer base is something we are slowly getting back up to pace. Pre-pandemic we had up to 25,000 volunteers annually, and when the pandemic hit, we did unfortunately have to shut down our in-person volunteering, and so that number took a very drastic dip. I think now we are a little bit closer to 5,000-10,000 volunteers, but we also just recently re-opened our in-person volunteer opportunities. We are hoping that within the next one to two years, we will get back to somewhere close to the number that we had pre-pandemic.

Can anyone volunteer and what are some of the opportunities?

We have a pretty large range of programming. At our Warehouse and Food Distribution Center in The Bronx, we have the Warehouse Repack program, which operates on Thursdays and Fridays, with two shifts on each day, one being in the morning and the other being in the afternoon, and works with groups of up to 15 people. We do ask that all volunteers be 18+ because it is a warehouse setting. At our Community Kitchen and Pantry in Harlem, we currently have two active volunteer opportunities: our Food Delivery Support and Restocking, which operates on Mondays and Fridays, and involves unloading the trucks that have all of the fresh produce and shelf-stable goods, that are then used for our Grab-and-Go Pantry Distribution, which operates Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and involves packing all of the fresh produce and shelf stable goods, and re-distributing to the community.

The one opportunity we currently have that is allowing volunteers 13+ is our Farm 2 Food Bank program, which partners with GrowNYC Greenmarkets throughout the five boroughs. We currently have volunteers at Union Square on Mondays and Fridays, Dag Hammarskjold on Wednesdays, and Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn on Saturdays. For this program, volunteers meet a driver on site to collect all of the fresh produce that different farmers are willing to donate, bag it, and load onto the truck. The driver will then go to a nearby member agency, which is a soup kitchen, and drop that off at their door to either make a meal with, or re-distribute to the community through our Grab-and-Go Pantry Distribution.

There’s a lot of great opportunities for people to get involved. I wanted to mention, from the few times that I have volunteered, I felt as though everything was so well organized which has definitely made the experience very enjoyable.

Thank you so much. It’s definitely nice to have our volunteers back in person.

What have you learned from working at Food Bank?

One thing that has really resonated with me while working at Food Bank is how much compassion really pushes the organization forward. Everybody that I’ve had the opportunity to work with here, we all come from different backgrounds, so somebody may be an English major while I, for example, was a Criminal Justice major, but we’re able to take those different backgrounds to really just continue to push forward and fight for that mission. Even taking it one step further and going out to our volunteers, people are a lot kinder than I think people from outside of New York City give us credit for. Because we’re so fast-paced, sometimes we’re very much down to business and that comes off a little, maybe abrasive, for people who are not used to it. People out here really care about the community, and a lot of that comes from the fact that we’re very prideful of the communities that we are from, and so when we have the opportunity to give back to that community, we really do our best, I would say tenfold,  to make sure that we are providing the best possible service to whoever comes to our door.

For more information on how to get involved with Food Bank for NYC, whether that be as a client, a volunteer, or a donor, please visit their website at www.foodbanknyc.org/. The organization’s website offers the ability to enter a zip code and find all of the soup kitchens and food pantries in that area.