By Liz Silva | Development Operations Manager
Report on Food Programs in Fiscal Year 2018
December, 2017
We at Rosie’s Place are so thankful for your generous support of our critical Food Programs for poor and homeless women and their children, through GlobalGiving.
The Need
Serving thousands of nutritious breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and offering assistance with groceries—the Food Programs at Rosie’s Place are longstanding and vital nutritional and financial supplements for our guests. Every day, we are helping some of the poorest women and children in Boston—with the most basic and critical needs. Consider:
Our Response
Rosie’s Place’s Dining Room Program
Rosie’s Place’s Dining Room is designed to solve short-term hunger needs by providing breakfast every weekday and lunch and dinner every day—365 days a year. This year, Rosie’s Place will serve more than 100,000 hearty and healthy—nutritionally balanced meals—to women and their children.
Food brings people together—especially at Rosie’s Place. Our Dining Room program brings volunteers, guests and staff together, fostering a sense of security and community so that our guests can connect to the services they need. Unlike other emergency meal programs, our guests don’t stand in line in our Dining Room to get their meals. Instead, our dedicated volunteers and dining room staff act as waiters and waitresses to serve guests restaurant style. By running our Dining Room in this unique way, we provide our guests with a sense of dignity and a place of respite from their day-to-day struggles. In FY2017, we served a total of 104,081 nutritious meals.
During the first quarter of FY2018 from July 1, 2017 through September 30, 2017:
On Labor Day, we hosted a barbecue with traditional summertime foods for our guests. Several of the Dining Room tables were spread around our courtyard for the guests to enjoy their meal while outside in the sunshine and fresh air. Several grillers and many volunteers helped make this a pleasurable day for all of our guests.
Rosie’s Place’s Groceries
Another vital food program is Rosie’s Place Groceries, a food pantry that allows nearly 1,900 women per month to take home 20 to 40 pounds of foods that their families prefer and enjoy. Rosie’s Place’s Groceries is unique. While many other agencies hand out pre-bagged groceries, our guests shop among shelves set up like a grocery store for foods their families will prefer and enjoy. Like our Dining Room, the Food Pantry uses this culturally sensitive approach to respect the dignity and self-esteem of our guests while ensuring that our resources are used effectively. In FY2017, we welcomed 23,583 visits (up 4% from last year). This is an average of 1,965 visits per month. In total, there were 6,398 unique guests—1,805 of whom were new and 1,441 of whom were over the age of 65.
Thus far in FY2018, we have accommodated even more guests in our Pantry than we did last year at this time—as the need for this vital program continues to increase.
From July 1, 2017 through September 30, 2017, Rosie’s Place Groceries:
Pantry Renovation
In the fall of 2017, renovations to our Food Pantry began. Our pantry welcomes tens of thousands of visits every year—more than ever before. As our program has grown—increasing our hours to welcome guests in the evenings as well as the mornings and expanding our space to include a room for the great donations of fresh produce we receive from local farms and food rescue partners—we have put a strain on our facilities. Specifically, our floors were beginning to collapse under the weight of the refrigeration units required to keep perishable food fresh. Additionally, because both rooms are so small, visits to our Pantry became a cramped “shopping” experience for our guests and staff alike.
We are delighted to report that two generous corporate partners are entirely donating a two-month expansion of our Pantry. This work entails pouring new concrete slabs in a storage area which abuts our current pantry and fresh produce rooms. This new foundation will allow for us to move our pantry into a larger room and will safely accommodate the refrigeration units our produce and perishable food require. The larger footprint of our pantry will mean more useable space for guests to “shop” and our staff and volunteers to stock, our shelves.
Nutrition and Wellness
At Rosie’s Place, we take care to offer our guests healthy recipes and information about nutrition and wellness. Our Dining Room frequently has bulletin boards with colorful nutritional information and the nurses of our Wellness Center offer workshops on healthy eating and general wellness topics throughout the year. Healthy recipes are distributed along with food in our Groceries Program and cooking demonstrations of nutritious and budget-friendly meals are held monthly. We also work with Cooking Matters, to offer regular trips to a local grocery store for guests interested in learning more about how to shop for affordable and wholesome food.
Because of you, we will continue offering nourishment and nurturing to the thousands of women who count on Rosie’s Place each year. Rosie’s Place does not accept any support from the city, state, or federal governments, nor from the United Way so we depend on private donations from friends like you. Thank you for being part of our community and for supporting our project on GlobalGiving. Your commitment to our work means so much and we wish you a happy and healthy holiday season.
By Liz Silva | Development Operations Manager
By Liz Silva | Development Operations Manager
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
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