ALIVE! Has Another Food Distribution This Saturday and Needs Face Masks

ALIVE! will conduct another food distribution to more than 1,000 families this Saturday, and the nonprofit needs face mask donations for volunteers.

“We received a donation from Yates Dry Cleaning,” ALIVE! Executive Director Jennifer Ayers told ALXnow. “We need more. We tried to order some recently and they’re hard to get. Right now we’re still waiting on them.”

ALIVE! has given away a record 110,000 pounds of food since the COVID-19 pandemic hit Alexandria. In fact, the nonprofit is breaking all sorts of records. On April 15, ALIVE! received the top number of donations —  $145,611 from 491 donors — in the annual Spring2ACTion fundraiser. The funds will be used for programming purposes, Ayers said.

“That was amazing,” Ayers said. “Our original goal was 60,000, based on what we raised last year.”

There's a lot of be thankful for this week at ALIVE! Handmade masks from Yates Dry Cleaning -PPE for volunteers and staff! And a big thank you again to @LidlUS for the amazing cold storage for our food warehouse, keeping things chill until we can get it out! pic.twitter.com/Mo5ioVxdqU

— Alive4Alexandria (@ALIVE4AlexVA) April 17, 2020

Home deliveries have also increased substantially, as ALIVE! is now delivering food every day to 500 individuals stuck at home, as opposed to an average of about 200 families before the crisis.

ALIVE! is utilizing a warehouse space provided by the city to receive all of the food from suppliers, and the pandemic has caused a few disruptions in deliveries. Inside the warehouse, no more than 10 volunteers at a time receive the food and package it, while being six feet away from each other.

“Home deliveries for today was 500, and that’s almost 600 pounds of food for just one day,” said Ann Patterson, ALIVE’s food program director. “I have enough food to do another 1,000 families this Saturday, but then we’ve got to figure out how to manage on a week-to-week and on a day-to-day type kind of basis, and you have to manage it that way because the supply chain has been disrupted.”

This Saturday’s food distribution will be held at the Leonard “Chick” Armstrong Recreation Center (23 W. Reed Ave.) and John Adams Elementary School (5651 Rayburn Avenue) from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Those receiving food are encouraged to drive to the sites and to stay in their cars. Pedestrians are asked to observe social distancing and to stay six feet away from volunteers or others.

Photo via Alive!/Facebook