Community

Comfort Food: “God’s Love” Gives Meals to Thousands of Sick People

By Jisu Choi
Spectrum staff

God’s Love We Deliver, a non-profit organization that cooks and delivers meals to the sick, started in 1985, when Ganga Stone brought food to an AIDS patient. That one act of kindness turned into many more just like it.

Volunteer Chuck Piekarski‘s last name means “baker” in Polish. He’s been donating his time and talent to God’s Love for 25 years and, right now, is one of its bakers.

“One mom was so sick she couldn’t bake a cake or afford a cake. She gets her meal and in the bag is a birthday cake for her kid, and she cried and cried because she had a birthday cake for her child,” said Piekarski, a volunteer since the 1980s when his AIDS-infected partner could not feed himself. “Stories like that … make you believe that you are making someone’s life a little better.”

God’s Love’s 10,000 volunteers deliver daily meals to 6,500 clients a year. The clients are spread throughout New York City, parts of New Jersey and Nassau County. Those clients suffer from more than 200 illnesses, ranging from AIDS to Alzheimer’s to multiple sclerosis to Parkinson’s.

The volunteers serving those sick people come from a wide-range of backgrounds and experiences and bring a variety of skills and desires to God’s Love. “Volunteers do everything from working at the office to preparing the food to gardening in the rooftop garden,” said Emmett Findley, communications manager for God’s Love.

Being on staff there is more than just a matter of earning a paycheck. It’s personally rewarding, too, he said.

“Delivering our meals reconnects me to the people we serve, I’m reminded how important our mission is,” he said. “We need to have nutritious food and if I can be apart of that to help someone get through whatever they’re going through, I think there’s no other better feeling.”

Another volunteer, Brenda Curtis, explained what drew her to God’s Love five years ago: “The sick need us, you know. We are on our feet and they are not … When I have a cold, I want somebody to bring me something to eat. So, I could imagine what it is like for these people that can’t cook for themselves.”

God’s Love, which started in a cramped, 18,000 square-foot building, now is housed in 48,500 square feet of a Soho office building. From there, registered dieticians have detailed conversations with clients about their eating preferences, food restrictions and the like.

When clients request meals, no questions are asked initially because God’s Love’s leaders know that talking about not having food can be a sensitive subject. But after 10 days, applicants must provide proof that they are sick and cannot provide their own meals.

“A lot of our clients say they can feel the love that’s been chopped into every meal by the volunteers,” Findley said. “It’s very moving to me.”