A nonprofit that provides meals to low-income children and the homeless in Boulder County served thousands of meals and provided coats, pants and shirts during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the group’s leader said last week.
“The COVID pandemic continued to impact our world and present some challenges,” Liz Friedenson, executive director for Colorado FriendShip (COF) said in an email. “But we preserved and successfully provided much needed assistance to our community.”
The children served by COF through its IncrEdibles program were all impacted by COVID-19 as they had to switch to remote learning during the latter part of the 2020 school year, Friendenson said. COF usually provides a bag of food on Fridays to students to take home over the weekend.
But the pandemic in spring 2020 forced COF to immediately launch an Emergency Response Initiative, in partnership with the St. Vrain Valley School District, to get food to those children at home, she said.
“Thankfully, our extra fundraising efforts were successful, and we placed an order for a large amount of additional food and organized volunteer teams to pack this food into bags and distribute the bags at designated school pick locations,” Friedenson said.
COF was able to provide an extra 11,000 bags of food to help those children, in some cases even delivering food to their houses when their families could not drive or were quarantined, she said.
COF also was able to continue to serve hot meals and other services to the homeless through its Meal on the Street program, because it takes place outside, Friendenson said.
In all, 31,240 food packs were delivered to children in 2020, a 72% increase over 2019, she said. COF served up to 600 children at 10 schools and made use of 274 volunteer packers and 15 delivery people, Friendenson said.
The group’s Hot Meals on the Street effort served 2,709 meals every Sunday in Boulder in 2020. COF also gave out 459 coats, 1,882 pairs of socks, 422 pairs of long underwear, 261 sleeping bags, 517 pairs of pantes, 300 pairs of gloves and 829 shirts, according to COF’s website.
