Every Thursday at her home in the East End of Lexington, Rosie receives produce from Good Foods Market. After a full day of cleaning houses, she prepares meals at her small church on Thursday night for those on her street, in her church, and in her community. She may only serve 50 food-insecure individuals each week, but it is through her actions and her ability to empathize that she is most successful. Those that come to her meals know Rosie, feel comfortable talking to her and sharing their troubles. They are community and as such help one another out without thought of recognition or commendation. They do not feel marginalized or outcast because Rosie ensures that all are welcome and loved; that all are fed and cared for.
At times we concentrate on numbers, numbers, numbers, and forgot the people behind those numbers! We have gleaned 800,000 pounds of produce in five years, rescuing precious produce from the landfill and redistributing it to those in need. In 2015, our gleaners have thus far made over 500 gleaning trips and recorded over a 1,000 hours gleaning. These numbers are great and provide us with a practical rubric to measure our success. HOWEVER, numbers fail to shed light on the impact of produce on the lives of our recipients. For this reason, we developed a set of values for GleanKY, one of which is ‘Empathy over Efficiency.’ Simply put, this means that “we are committed to building relationships to better address the nutritional needs of our recipients.”
“Building relationships” is critical to our success as an organization. All of our partner feeding agencies engage in community building, but no one does it on a grass roots level like our neighborhood ambassadors. Though they may not feed as many, they live within and serve directly communities in need. They build up their communities within, serving their neighbors who oftentimes do not know the source of their next meal. Led by empathy, our neighborhood ambassadors like Rosie give unselfishly of themselves to increase access to nutritious produce that is most often in short supply in impoverished areas. During this giving season, think of our neighborhood ambassadors like Rosie who give of themselves without thought of reward or personal gain. By giving, you can make certain that our neighborhood ambassadors continue to receive the freshest of fruits and vegetables for their neighbors and community members