NO/AIDS Task Force - Food for Friends

Food for Friends

The Food For Friends program at NO/AIDS Task Force has been supplying meals and pantry service to HIV/AIDS clients since 1996. Up until Hurricane Katrina, before our kitchen was destroyed, we were preparing all meals and housing the pantry on Columbus Ave. just off Broad. Within a few months after Katrina we began delivering frozen meals out of a NO/AIDS staffs home. In 2009 we delivered over 23,000 meals to clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays that were prepared through a collaboration that we have with a catering company. The pantry, now located at our home office on Tulane Ave., distributed over 75,000 lbs of groceries last year.

Home Delivered Meals

Presently we have 7 delivery routes. Each route has specific directions that guide you from one client to the next from the temporary kitchen. Most routes take about an hour and are delivered between 8:30 AM and 11:00 AM Tuesday and Thursday. We have a short list of substitute drivers to call on when our regular drivers are out. Most clients are very grateful and build a light friendship with the drivers. This may be their only contact with a friendly face all day. It is a very rewarding experience.

Food Pantry

The pantry is located at 2601 Tulane Ave. at the main office of NO/AIDS Task Force. This has allowed clients coming to clinic or any of the other services offered at NO/AIDS to also pick up their groceries at the same time. The pantry is open from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM, Monday through Friday. Clients check in the lobby, then they are brought back to the pantry individually and assisted in their selections by the volunteers. Clients choose what they want from nine categories in a grocery store atmosphere.

New Kitchen

NO/AIDS and First Unitarian Universalist Church entered into a collaborative agreement in 2007 to open a community kitchen at the church site at Jefferson Ave. and Claiborne St in the Broadmore area. We are in hopes that the new kitchen will be up and running in September 2010. This will begin a new and very exciting time in our food service mission. We will be back cooking every day and needing many more volunteers. We will also need a group of enthusiastic volunteers as a paint team to polish off our bright new kitchen before we open. It would be wonderful if you would contact us in anticipation of projects before we open the kitchen and becoming a kitchen/food prep volunteer.

If you are interested in volunteering for the Food For Friends program, please contact:

Doreen Keller-Tollerson
Director of Volunteers
504-821-2601 ext 215
Doreent@noaidstf.org

OR

Glen Kahrman
Food For Friends Program Manager
504-821-2601 ext. 254