Honeybee Hotel by Leslie Day

Author:Leslie Day
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2018-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

Honeybee foraging with full pollen basket. Leslie Day

15

ACROSS THE STREET, BUT WORLDS APART

FEEDING THE HUNGRY AT ST. BART’S

Privilege is the measure of duty, that the strong should help the weak.

—The Reverend David Hummel Greer, St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, 1891

St. Bartholomew’s reputation for helping poor and immigrant communities extends back to 1888 and has continued into modern times. In 2010, St. Bart’s formed Crossroads Community Services to further broaden community involvement. Since then, Crossroads has managed St. Bart’s soup kitchen, food pantry, and women’s shelter. Each day a nutritious meal is served to 150–200 people, and 250 people take food from the food pantry each week.

Crossroads is run by the Reverend Edward Sunderland, LCSW, associate rector of St. Bart’s. Father Sunderland is both a priest and a social worker, who, throughout his career, has specialized in medical social work, palliative care, and homelessness. Peter Betz initially reached out to Father Sunderland to explore ways the hotel could help, and when David arrived he developed the partnership. In explaining the Waldorf’s history with St. Bart’s, David explained: “One of the things I thought we could easily do would be to give them all the extra Danish, croissants, and bagels so they could use them for their breakfast. One of the cooks said, ‘Well, why don’t we just put them all in the boxes, like we do anyway at the end of the day, and just leave them on the counter in the kitchen. One of the people from across the street can just come over and get them?’”

David worked out the details with Waldorf security, telling them, “Hey, there are three guys that work across the street. If we give you their names is it okay if they come over every day?” It was that simple, David remembered: “They said, ‘Yeah, no problem, as long as we know who they are.’”

David paused for a second and then continued:

Here are these two buildings across the street from each other: the Waldorf Astoria and St. Bart’s Church. They’ve been across the street from each other for more than eight decades, and over there you have hungry people and people that are trying to feed them. Right across the street is the back door to Oscar’s restaurant. Now, instead of throwing prepared, untouched food into the garbage, we put it in a box. They walk across the street to get it every day. Baked goods, bacon, and sausage that have been on the buffet. Just yesterday, with the snowstorm and fewer customers, we had a lot of food and desserts left over from Oscar’s. St. Bart’s had about 150 people to feed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.