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Made
With Love Cafe & Grill
in St Bernard's Parish
The Made With Love Cafe and Grill
"Made
With Love Cafe & Grill"
The
all volunteer "Made With Love Cafe & Grill" operated by
Emergency Communities in St Bernard Parish is now serving over 1300 meals
per day.
St.
Bernard Parish, a New Orleans suburb that abuts the southeastern
border of the city, appears as though little has changed in the three
months since Hurricane Katrina covered the city in floodwaters.
Though the waters have receded, several inches of muck still cover many
thoroughfares. Nearly all 40,000 residences and businesses were inundated
for days, and a large majority of the city's buildings have been deemed
unrecoverable. Only a fraction of the city's 70,000 residents have returned,
living primarily in FEMA trailers. The municipality has been unable
to secure commitments from national grocers and retailers and is unable
to provide even basic infrastructure to returning residents�a difficult
situation made more difficult by concerns that many residents will return
after emergency federal housing assistance ends December 1.
Emergency
Communities will arrive in the area on November 28th, and create a
kitchen in Sidney D. Torres Memorial Park designed to service 1,000 residents
and volunteers daily. Through the experience gained by many of our volunteers
running similar operations in New Orleans proper and Waveland, Mississippi,
we will provide a clean and secure space offering three meals a day, seven
days a week. We will also cook nutritious meals, striving to use fresh
ingredients, and creating a friendly and hospitable atmosphere that will
make our kitchen a place people not just need to go, but also want
to go - because we understand that dignity is just as much a part of recovery
as a hot meal.
We
will recruit our all-volunteer crew through networks of NGOs and friends.
We will secure supply lines from farms, food distributors, food banks,
and individual donors, and we will secure donated or lent equipment. We
will fundraise to purchase all other equipment, provide support to our
volunteer efforts, and make up for gaps in supply. And we hope to support
other agencies and NGOs in their efforts to help St. Bernard Parish recover
and rebuild.
Project
Details
Emergency
Communities will begin building the kitchen site on November 28 and
will begin serving on December 5. For the first two weeks, we expect to
feed 500 people daily, eventually ramping up to a capacity of 1,000 people
served daily. Between December 5 and March 5, we expect to serve a total
of 126,000 meals.
Having
been asked by the parish to set up in St. Bernard, we have established
a partnership with the local government, which is providing our site,
fuel, potable water, and limited living facilities for the duration of
our operations.
Many
of our supplies will be brought from the New Waveland Cafe, a successful
relief kitchen that we are shutting down on November 27th.
However, we will need financial assistance to cover our daily operation
costs, with everything ranging from food to medical supplies to fuel.
The
possibilities of our services are endless. We have a flexible budget in
that with more support, we can provide more to the community. A dome could
be brought in to provide warm shelter while people eat; more medical supplies
and volunteers could be found; we could purchase more tools with which
we could dispatch teams of volunteers to assist in construction or demolition
of houses. Every penny we receive will be put to use in assisting the
community during this dire time.
The
Made With Love Cafe will be the first action entirely started and
operated by Emergency Communities. Many of us cut our teeth on
various relief efforts around the Gulf Coast since Hurricane
Katrina - from the Biloxi Buddhist Temple to the New Waveland
Cafe to the New Orleans Welcome Home Cafe. The Made With Love Cafe and
Grill will potentially be the largest relief kitchen yet attempted by
an independent relief effort, and with your help, we will be successful.
The Count and Countess of the serving line at Made With
Love Cafe
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