God’s Love We Deliver turns 35 years old today. We are so proud and honored to be here with you.
We began with the simple principle that no one should ever have to face the dual crises of illness and hunger. We brought meals to home-bound people living with HIV/AIDS.
Today, with your support, we’ve grown, expanded our mission and reached some amazing milestones:
- Over 17,000 annual volunteers helped us last year
- We cooked and home-delivered over 2.1 million meals last year
- This spring, we cooked and delivered our 25 millionth meal; and
- We now serve clients with over 200 unique diagnoses.
So much has changed in our 35 years, but our core values have not. Every day our clients struggle with malnutrition, illness, hunger and isolation and, every day, more and more people reach out to us for help. When they contact God’s Love, they find a community who cares deeply about them.
Together, we are dedicated to cooking and delivering the individually-tailored meals and providing the nutrition counseling that our clients require at a time in their lives when they need it most. And, thanks to you and your support, our meals and services are free to clients, and full of love.
The COVID-19 pandemic we are living through reminds us of our earliest days. Then, at a time filled with great fear and uncertainty, we learned how to treat people with respect and dignity no matter their illness or circumstances. We honored their hopes and fears as they lived through anxious moments, day by day. This spring and every day, we put all of this into practice.
This is a scary time for all of us, but especially our clients. We are working diligently so that our entire community – clients, staff, volunteers and donors – feel now as they did when we first started: safe, cared for, and supported. To meet the growing demand for our services and ensure we are serving as many people as possible, we have streamlined our menu and brought on additional staff in our Nutrition, Client Services, Delivery and Meal Packaging Departments. To keep everyone safe, we have changed many of our protocols from screening volunteers and practicing social distancing, to implementing no contact deliveries and wearing masks in our building and on the road.
While everything has changed, the most important thing has not: the love we bring to our clients each and every day.
With illness comes so much challenge; it is why we focus so hard on bringing many moments of celebration to our clients, through personalized birthday cakes, special Thanksgiving meals, holiday gifts, and more. Since our beginning, our clients have reached out to us to tell us how much they feel and appreciate this loving care.
For the next twelve months, we will be doing things – big and small – to celebrate and remember our 35th Anniversary. We hope you join us on our
blog and on
social media as we celebrate all that we have accomplished together in 35 years of caring for our neighbors living with severe illness. And, we look forward to the day when we can gather together to celebrate this milestone anniversary.