So, the reason I’m doing this introduction is because, for the better part of a year, we’ve been serving our neighbors in Sullivan County during times of crisis.
It is important to know that I am not a writer and suck at grammar. I did everything I could to screw up school (You see what I mean?) growing up. But what the heck, I’m giving this a shot anyway.
Every situation, every person, every experience over the past year has become a very personal matter for me and if you would have told me a year ago that would have been the case, I’m not sure I would have agreed,
When we started the Sullivan Fresh Community Cupboard it was Tom Bosket and myself, out of Cornell Cooperative Extension Sullivan County and Sullivan Allies Leading Together (SALT). At that time in March 2020, the most telling thing was how deafening the silence was in our communities. The people we met along the way were collectively starving for leadership, guidance, and consideration
I can only remember one agency that was a continued presence from a grassroots point of view during the past year and that was Action Towards Independence (ATI).
Once Tom and I started to address access to food issues there were several things that were really important to us. One was that folks understood we were not a charity, a notion that was a little offensive to us because we realized that at any given time, we all need a little bit of a human touch to get us through the rough patches that occur in our lives. The idea that we are anything but neighbors collaborating with neighbors seemed a little above our spiritual pay grades!
Think for a minute about the times in our lives when we may have felt consumed by something, a problem that we may have felt was insurmountable and how hopeless we were left to feel. Some of us have avenues of support and still felt all alone to suffer with these demons, and some of us had no support leaving us devastated. We may have just needed a little bit of consideration, a shoulder, a hand to hold, someone who would listen. We needed HOPE!
The other thing that was important to us was sustaining folks in regard to hunger, rather than “treat” their conditions. Let me explain.
From the onset Tom and I realized that we could provide a meal for folks or take hunger out of the picture by delivering enough food for a week (at minimum two meals daily). We had this crazy notion that if folks did not have to worry about hunger, then maybe they could devote some time to pursuing things like employment, education, healthcare, housing, and the list goes on and on.
In talking with folks, we learned that once a singular meal was provided, folks still had to devote time concerning where their next meal would come from, hindering people from becoming empowered to the point of self-sufficiency.
What fuels this notion is the weekly calls we get from neighbors that we have served stating that they no longer need the food because they have been stabilized. This is always followed with, “Please bring the food to others who are in need, we finally do not need it anymore.”
One of the most powerful things for any human being is to be stabilized, and we hoped that providing food for the week aids to stabilization.
Finally, we have always looked at food as a bridge to more than diminishing a single obstacle to stabilization, but rather a cultivator to maintain equilibrium.
We do not just deliver food, we remind folks how important they are to our community, how much we need them, and how much they “bring to the table.”
Just yesterday, a veteran with a disability said, “I got to tell you, my week is never any good but then you guys come knock on my door and I feel better because I can talk to someone, I can smile, I do not have to feel alone.” We hear things like this a lot. But you know what? We cannot truly impact others unless we are impacted. We thanked this fellow for allowing us to be his servant and reinforced his value to our community as a neighbor by reminding him we are all in this together, and Together we are Better.
I take very seriously our responsibility to all the people we come across! A mentor of mine once said at one o’clock in the morning on 116th and Lennox Ave. in Harlem, “You know Marty, you can’t keep what you have unless you give it away.”
I guess I want to be the most selfish person in the world because I intend to give it all away in order to keep every memory, every touch, every tear, every smile, every heartbreak, and every inspiration from all of the people I have served over the last 40 years.
— Martin Colavito