Food Bank features “Soul Food” at Harlem Week Block Party
Harlem’s Food Bank for New York City’s Community Kitchen and Pantry held its second annual block party and food giveaway in celebration of Harlem Week this past Sunday.
The Food Bank (116th St and Frederick Douglass Boulevard) has been a lifeline for Harlem residents since 1984. A food bank distributes emergency free meals. In the New York City area, there are about 800 food programs across the city that serve 1.8 million New Yorkers facing food insecurity on an annual basis.
It was sunny and hot for the 2023 block party, with music playing to entertain people as they sought refuge in the shade with weighted-down plates of food. Community members lined up in front of the triple-plated outdoor grill or the fresh produce stand, waiting eagerly for their turn. Kids played with chalk in a sectioned-off activity station.
Chef Sheri Jefferson, a 59-year-old Bronxite, has led the Food Bank’s culinary team for the last seven years. She and her crew were poised over the hot grills for hours, preparing cole slaw and cooking hamburgers, franks, barbequed chicken, and baked beans for anyone who wanted a treat. Jefferson, smiling widely while surrounded by wafts of smoke and soaked in sweat, said that was where she was meant to be.
“I believe [in] everything we do here every day,” said Jefferson. “Food is life.”
She was happy that the vision for the event had come to fruition and was quite ecstatic about this year’s turnout.
“We want people to know that the community kitchen is here for them and we have services for them,” said Food Bank Director Sultana Ocasio.
Ocasio, who was at the block party with her young daughter, said Food Bank also runs a pantry with free groceries, helps with anti-hunger solutions and budgeting ideas, prepares hot meals, and assists residents with applying for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits at their Harlem site. For the block party, Ocasio estimated that they distributed about 400 meals with the donated produce and food.
“It means for [a family] that they are not alone and uncared for,” said Ocasio. “When you have a food program that is open to the public that is easily accessible, you’re acknowledging the humanity in the next person. You’re human, I’m human. I have to eat, you have to eat.”
The Food Bank has helped the city weather numerous crises, said Ocasio. During the COVID pandemic, there was an allotment increase for SNAP benefits nationwide to address the sharp rise in food insecurity. For almost three years since then, families of all class backgrounds came to rely on benefits or supplemental groceries from food pantries to get by. The allotment ended in March 2023, decreasing as food prices inflated. Ocasio said the end of the allotment affected a lot of residents and the emergency food network as a whole.
“Folks [who] had those benefits, they were dropped, so we immediately saw our numbers spike,” said Ocasio. The numbers are not like the height of COVID, but the Food Bank is still seeing a need for its services, she said.
Ocasio said in disadvantaged communities and even in objectively “wealthy” neighborhoods in the city, there are residents who live in pockets that lack access to food, especially with the onslaught of the migrant crisis that began last year. According to recent city numbers, there are more than 57,000 asylum seekers in the city, in addition to the homeless population, who need shelter, food, and services currently. The Food Bank is already a crisis management agency when it comes to food, so it was able to adapt to support food programs that saw more migrants, said Ocasio.
“I know that we have seen migrants come to the community kitchen, and there were times in the winter when [although] we don’t typically take donations of clothing, some Venezuelan migrants had come in literally in flip-flops and T-shirts. They were unprepared for the weather and it was very frigid,” said Ocasio. “Luckily, we had some new coats from a partner…realizing that it was a crisis situation.”
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
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