Joe forklift12/11/2023 ![]() ![]() Brown accomplished another longtime dream: to write an autobiography. “I was glad to be able to read the simplest things,” he said, recalling the excitement of understanding subway advertisements on his way to class. Brown, who began participating in the program’s group classes in 2011 before connecting with his longtime tutor, Vera Konig, in 2013. Then, at the age of 72, he made a change.Īfter hearing a radio advertisement for Literacy Partners, an organization that also received a grant and helps low-income and immigrant adults improve their reading and language skills, he took matters into his own hands. The Fund’s contribution will provide 2,000 coats, with a focus on children of asylum seekers and migrant families and those living in temporary housing. The group, a national nonprofit organization that makes winter coats and shoes for children, is working with the New York City Departments of Education and Homeless Services to fulfill its goal of providing new coats, shoes or both to 17,000 children this year. Soto said simply, “It’s really nice to have people that care.”Īnother organization that received a grant, Operation Warm, is also providing help to those in need. Soto now has the strength to do the activities he loves, including dancing at the senior center, going for drives - he operates a car with the use of his left leg alone - and, most of all, taking trips with his daughter, who now works as a special-education teacher. With the assistance he receives from Citymeals, Mr. Soto was able to move into a ground-floor apartment in the same building, making his daily life significantly easier, he said. “I know them by the way they knock on my door,” he said. Soto said he had come to rely on the sustenance of the meals - they have improved over the years, he said with a laugh - and the regular drop-ins from the Citymeals delivery team, who constitute a community of sorts. Soto has been receiving a meal a day from Citymeals ever since. Soto’s community center introduced him to Citymeals on Wheels, a nonprofit that delivers meals to older adults in New York City and also received a grant from The Fund. “I would stay home all day.”įive years ago, the staff at Mr. Soto, who lost part of his right leg to injuries after serving in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, climbed the six flights - 138 stairs exactly - with a crutch, often making the trip only once a day, or not leaving at all. ![]() But it also meant moving into a sixth-floor walk-up in East Harlem.įor years, Mr. Soto, 71 and a disabled veteran, said moving back to New York allowed him to be close to his daughter when she was graduating from college. Grants from The Neediest Cases Fund are also providing help for Anthony Soto. Between inflation and an influx of migrants to the city, the number is rising again and the team is bracing for more busy months. Today, Morrisania serves roughly 1,000 people arriving from the far reaches of the Bronx, Queens and even Connecticut three days a week. “Without the forklift, we wouldn’t be able to do it at all,” Ms. The effect has been profound in the 2021 fiscal year, Morrisania provided roughly 2.7 million meals through City Harvest this year, the number grew to 3.2 million. New equipment - Big Joe has a 3,000-pound capacity and a 42-inch fork - has cut unloading time to just an hour or less, allowing the pantry to distribute goods more quickly and on a much larger scale. City Harvest is also part of the network of Feeding America, a beneficiary agency of The Fund. Last year, City Harvest, which received a grant from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, was able to purchase a forklift for Morrisania through its Network Capacity program. Unloading a single truck by human assembly line would take five hours or more and often required assistance from waiting customers. Brown’s uncle, fittingly nicknamed “Old Faithful,” carried much of the load, followed later by two electric ones from City Harvest. But more food posed major infrastructural challenges, and pantry volunteers were often left to unload 30 pallets of deliveries by hand every day, using just three pallet jacks.Ī worn, manual jack on loan from Ms. Brown began requesting larger shipments from donating organizations, including City Harvest, a nonprofit based in New York City. “The pantry is also a big safety net for families.” “People were going hungry,” Ivy Brown, the program director at Morrisania, said in a recent interview. Formerly a small community pantry serving 100 or so people a week, it frequently helped about 5,000 a week in the first months of Covid. Since the pandemic began, the pantry at Morrisania, which focuses on community development and housing, has expanded drastically.
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