CHICAGO (WLS) — With prices rising due to inflation and many people struggling to feed their families, there’s a community effort underway to make sure people have what they need.
Volunteers are collecting food on the Southwest Side and delivering it to people who need it.
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A group is using a Southwest Side restaurant to cook up a new recipe – the main ingredient: community helping community. They are doing their part to help those struggling to feed their families.
Saturday evening, an army of volunteers packed up grocery bags of food and other essentials donated by local small businesses looking to help keep food on the table for people in need.
‘We have over 1,000 people that registered that are not able to get groceries and need help and assistance,” said Eddie Guillen with the Community Innovation Center’s Midway Delivery Program. “Thankfully, we have some great and amazing volunteers delivery drivers and admin support that’s connecting drivers to routes.”
The effort is housed in the El Pollo Cris Cris Mexican restaurant on South Pulaski Avenue in West Lawn, and it is the brainchild of owner Rudy Luna, who started the program with four other donors. Since then, more than 50 other small businesses have stepped up to help.
“So we’re inviting small business owners to join us or start themselves anywhere,” Luna said. “They are helping their community, their clients. We want to give back to our customers.”
Organizers say they are only accepting donations of food and essentials and always need more items to meet the growing number of requests for help.
“Each bag is based on whatever the donors because we have multiple donors,” head volunteer Artemiza “Tammy” Chavez said. “As you can see, they have eggs, juice, oil, bread, toiletries, such as toothpaste, and soap, laundry detergent, rice beans, potatoes.”
The volunteers said these are difficult economic and political times. Nearly 2 million Illinoisans could lose their SNAP food assistance benefits Nov. 1, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, if the federal government remains shut down.
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That makes the deliveries more important than ever.
The group has been at this for about a week, but the they say they will continue for as long as they can because it’s all about helping the community.
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