Dear Nashville,
What a hard, sad, mixed-up time for our city. My heart breaks for so many in our community whose homes, neighborhoods, and favorite local places were devastated in the tornadoes this week. And yet... I swell with pride when I witness the ways neighbors are showing up for one another. Life often delivers both beauty and chaos together. I do not understand why life unfolds this way, but stand in awe of the hope and love and connections that emerge when unexpected loss rips through our community.
As in other times when our city has found itself in the midst of an emergency (like the 2010 flood and the 2019 partial federal government shutdown), The Nashville Food Project is poised to respond. Our staff and vehicles have been on the streets today and yesterday sharing thousands of made-from-scratch meals to emergency shelters and neighborhood recovery hubs in North Nashville, East Nashville, and Donelson. We are listening to our partners and local emergency management services to coordinate and activate a sustained response effort that we expect to stretch long into the coming days and weeks. We will be keeping our social media and website up to date, so please check there for updates and specific ways to support and plug in. Scroll down for more.
As many of you know, a helpful, coordinated relief effort takes a bunch of layers of communication with many partners and key stakeholders, so thank you in advance for your patience and all your tremendous support.
With love,
If you know of a shelter or community hub in need of food support, let us know. We don’t have capacity to accommodate all requests, but we’re working with partners to fulfill as many as possible. This week we have routes serving the following locations:
Lunch:
New Covenant Christian Church, 3/16, 3/17
FiftyForward, 3/17
Lunch, Saturday/Sunday:
Now more than ever, financial contributions are needed to meet the needs of our city. We can put those to important use by helping us buy food and supplies, fuel our vehicles and run our kitchens to keep cooking high-quality meals. A donation of $5 buys food and supplies for five meals.
As we receive updates from our partners and learn more about how our partners, our volunteers and our team can get involved we will share that information here.
Additional resources we’re hearing about:
More resources collected by the Nashville Scene.
To volunteer your time, sign up with Hands on Nashville.
To donate everything EXCEPT clothing, stop by the Community Resource Center, located at 218 Omohundro Pl, Nashville, TN 37210.
Eater Nashville is collecting ways the hospitality industry is pulling together.
Partner sites and affected areas:
Update: 3/3/2020, 9 p.m:
In addition to restoring power at our headquarters, sharing food at emergency sites and working on a coordinated relief plan for the week, we were also committed to our largest food recovery project of the year tonight. We collected, sorted and packed 28,000 pounds of meat from the Meat Conference at Gaylord Opryland. It will help fuel our meals program going forward. Thank you to all the volunteers who helped make this happen on an already very busy day. More updates on our plan moving forward tomorrow.
Update: 3/3/2020, 4 p.m.:
Thanks to the kindness of our friends at R.C. Mathews and Dodd Electric, we now have a generator running our kitchen at limited power. Our staff and vehicles have been on the streets today sharing cold meals to emergency shelters and neighborhood recovery hubs in North and East Nashville. Now that partial power has been restored, we are working on a full relief effort plan for the remainder of the week and weekend. This will include volunteer opportunities in our kitchens to support emergency meal service in our community. Updates will be posted here as available.
Previously Posted:
Thank you to the many folks in our community who have reached out to support recovery efforts after last night’s devastating storms. Currently at The Nashville Food Project, our power is out, and we are working quickly to restore it and reallocate any cold meals we currently have prepared. Many of our partners are closed today so we are actively working to reallocate all planned meals to emergency shelters and community centers in the areas most affected. Sites that should receive support in the form of prepared meals today include:
North Nashville:
Lee Chapel AME Church (lunch meal)
East Nashville:
East End UMC (lunch meal)
We are in close communication with our partners and with the Metro Emergency Services to determine how we can continue to support efforts this week. We do hope to increase our volume, and will keep this site updated on how you can pitch in. Besides getting meals out to shelters today, our highest priority is restoring power to ensure no food on hand is lost.