Serving the hungry and homeless
during a pandemic
Rising to the
Challenge
By CHRISTINE R. GONZALEZ
Photography by ALLISON POTTER
EVERY year at Thanksgiving, restaurateur
Come see how
we do things
Breaking the bondages of homelessness and poverty by
responsibly sowing Godly love and material resources. First
Fruit is a one-stop-shop for the poor offering medical care,
psychiatric counseling, meals, clothes, showers, boxes of food,
transitional housing for 12 single women, and jobs.
Rick and Lee Anna Stoker, 2750 Vance St., Wilmington, NC 28412
OFFICE HOURS: M-F 9 am–2 pm • 910-794-9656
Help make a child’s Wish Come True
Please help the
Marine Corps League Cape Fear
Detachment 1070
with your donations of new, unwrapped toys
or financial assistance and make the holidays
special for our area children.
18
WBM december 2020
Ash Aziz feeds the homeless at his restau-rant
on Front Street. This year, the plan was
modified for safety to take away containers
and only outdoor seating, but the food rivaled a feast
fit for a king.
Homeless shelters and food programs are adjusting
to meet increased challenges during the pandemic, with
fewer staff and volunteers to assist them with their mis-sion
of caring for the most vulnerable.
“COVID has turned our world upside down in terms of
typical service delivery. Nobody had a blueprint to share
with us on how to respond in a situation like this,” says
Katrina Knight, executive director of the Good Shepherd
Center in Wilmington.
In late March, Good Shepherd was housing 75 to 85
homeless adults and children plus center staff in one
building.
“There was no amount of creativity that would get
everyone spaced apart enough to adequately do social
distancing,” Knight says. “Like most shelters, ours is
designed to be congregate in nature.”
Mimicking what larger cities like Charlotte were doing,
Knight took the initiative to place their women and fami-lies
in motels, at least temporarily.
“About March 31st, we moved our ladies and families
to local motel rooms and began serving them there,” she
says. “We took food, provided quarters for laundry, pro-vided
transportation to essential places, and provided
their case management over there. Doing that allowed
me to take our 50 gentlemen and spread the men out
over all three dorms.”
Major Mark Craddock with The Salvation Army of the
Cape Fear had to apply similar measures, reducing capac-ity
50 percent to house 25 people. Two beds are kept on
reserve for the homeless being released from hospital care.
The Salvation Army has protocols in place to aid
a homeless person who has tested positive for the
coronavirus.
“When a homeless individual tests positive for COVID
we cannot bring them into our general populations,”
For more information or to donate
Wilmington.NC@toysfortots.org