PROVISO FOOD & RESOURCE COALITION

We are continuing to support our community with food, wellness check-in’s and more. Our food coalition officially has a name too, we are now called the Proviso Food & Resources Coalition. We are made up of 5 locally led organizations called: Best of Proviso Township, NextGen Church, Impact Church, God’s Heritage Church, and The Firehouse Dream. I love how we are a multi racial and multi-generational coalition, and it’s been nothing but a pure joy to collaborate and partner with these amazing organizations!

We also had many of other organizations partner with for our Food Distribution on June 6th. The way God has brought an abundance of food and community had been amazing!

Special thanks to: Maywood Police, Village of Maywood, Maywood Census, PP4H, Freedom Fighters, HOJO, The Greater Northern Food Depository, Forty Acres, UTURN Covenant church, UTURN Covenant Church, many individual donors and more!

Check out the photos from our food drive:

Photography Teacher...who me?

Since the beginning of Dec 2019, I’ve been teaching photography to a group of students at Proviso East. Our photo club averaged 3-7 students each time we met…which took place on Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s. We made huge progress from learning how to see light, to my students learning how to change their settings in manual, and then how to import and edit their photos in Lightroom. We had big goals of showcasing student work in the hallways, as well as putting on an end of year gallery.

While all programming is on hold with COVID-19, I remain hopeful that when we can meetup again, that we will be able to move forward with pursuing those big goals!

So friends….here’s a few Iphone pics I took while at Proviso East over the past few months.

HOW WILL OUR NEIGHBORS EAT?

We live in a food desert...so my first thought was...”How will our neighbors eat?”

A pressing challenge that we face everyday, not just in the midst of COVID-19, however, it has only exacerbated our food insecurity.

I posed this question on Facebook, and my friend, Randall, from Best of Proviso NP, commented stating that he was planning something. I immediately told him that I was in, and even offered up the firehouse should we need a location.

Well, on Thursday we hosted a food drop off, where we received 180 frozen meals from HOJO , where we organized and hand delivered the dinners to those most in need.

Then on Saturday, we received another donation from HOJO, who dropped off 10,000 pounds of food along with other donations from PP4H, and more. We met at God’s Heritage Church’s parking lot to disperse bags of food for our most vulnerable. Cars were lined up before we were even open, and before we knew it we were out of food. The need is great so we are planning and strategizing on what else we can do to support our local restaurants, and our most vulnerable. Between the pickups, deliveries, and 150 bags of food that was prepared for the elderly, we are estimating that 250 families were served.

I’m so grateful to have been a part of this movement with other organizers, churches, and non profits...and of course our volunteers and donors too! I’ll keep you informed as we continue to plan and strategize for the next food drive up, and more!