DETROIT – With so many people out of work, the need is great this holiday season.
Local organizations -- like Focus: HOPE -- are trying to ease the burden one meal at a time.
Loretta Brown is one of hundreds -- yes, hundreds -- of volunteers working with Focus: HOPE to bring food to low income seniors across Metro Detroit.
“We’re reaching out through the community, throughout the metro area,” Brown said. “We just want to help wherever we can.”
Focus: HOPE typically takes care of about 40,000 seniors a month with their food, but during the holidays they pick a group of seniors to receive an extra holiday box.
“So we’ll have the turkey, produce, stuffing -- all things for a holiday meal -- and not just for Christmas, but hopefully a few more days before and after that,” said Focus: HOPE Food Program Director Frank Kubik,
Saturday, Focus: Hope delivered 1,400 special holiday boxes.
‘We’ve got hundreds of volunteers,” Kubik said. “We call the seniors ahead of time so they know we’re coming. It will be contactless, they drop it off at the door, but it’s still a great experience for the families that come in. Especially for the seniors who need help during the holidays.”
Normally, the volunteers would be sorting and loading inside a warm warehouse, but the coronavirus pandemic forced them outside.
“We reached out to them and said we’re going to do it different this year, it’s not going to be inside,” Kubik said. “They said, ‘No problem!’ They stepped up and said they’ll do what needs to be done.”
You can donate to Focus: HOPE on its official website here.