it started with a phone call at the height of the pandemic . . .
New York was hit hard in those first few weeks. The media referred to the city as the epicenter of the pandemic, but they were calling Queens “the epicenter within the epicenter.” Some of the most financially challenged people in the city were living there, the pandemic had hit hard, and the community was left devastated.
Before the pandemic, Mammad, one of our co-founders, had volunteered at a soup kitchen and seen firsthand the socio-economic gaps experienced by many of those served. It was easy to imagine how the pandemic had widened those gaps.
The call came from Father Mike—our friend at Hungry Monk in Queens who shared the word that the neighborhood was devastated. “Most of the pantries and kitchens have closed,” he told us. “There are no donations from restaurants as they are all shut down.”
Mike had started getting calls from other neighborhoods and different boroughs. There wasn’t enough food to go around. The number of people who needed help was increasing and the number of places offering it was plummeting. He even got a call from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) about her neighborhood in the Bronx.
East Village Loves Queens
We jumped into action, at first concentrating on raising money for him. We’d seen a lot of generosity in the East Village, so we started with our neighbors. To build a bridge between our two communities, we originally called our project East Village Loves Queens.
Father Mike said the greatest need was cooked food, so we began cooking. Ali Sahin from C&B Cafe on East 7th Street gave us the keys to his kitchen so we could use it in the evening when it was closed.
We collected donations by day and cooked in the evenings. On the first day in the tiny space, we made 600 meals for the people in Queens.
Rebranding to EVLovesNYC
As time went on, other grassroots organizations around the city reached out to us for food. The pandemic may have been winding down but its aftermath left many New Yorkers financially devastated, and it broadened socio-economic gaps. By now our food was getting out to all corners of the city and, through word of mouth (and social media!), people from every borough began showing up to volunteer with us.
It was time to change our name to include everyone in our beloved city: EVLovesNYC.
Now we serve over 70 organizations who come to pick up food from us and ferry it all over the city, from the Bronx down to Brownsville. Our food makes it into the hands of the people most in need of it through distributions at churches, mosques, community fridges, and from tables and carts set up in parks and outside shelters.
EVLovesNYC continues to strive for food security and for supporting all our neighbors in need with healthy and nutritious meals, so that they can thrive with dignity and self-respect.