I Don’t Know the Answer, but Lubrication Helps

There’s a new program in Hendersonville whose mandate is to help the homeless and isolated, including senior citizens living on their own. The approach is to use good, healthy food as a tool, a lubricant, in building relationships. The goal is to engage, establish trust, and ultimately enable a lifestyle change for the better.

Engage WNC recently got their 501(c)(3) non-profit standing. They don’t have an online presence yet, but it’ll come after they’re better established. A marketing consultant is currently helping with what they need to get started online and for print materials. The eight-member Board have partnered with the Hendersonville Community Co-op, but other businesses and organizations have heard about them and are also helping.

Engage’s Executive Director Judith Long explained, “It’s about relationships and leaning into social isolation and loneliness in an effort to help people get to the next place/step in whatever’s going on.” Meals are prepared by Chef Donnie Simmons in the new (Nov 2023) Co-op kitchen and then taken to homeless camps and a couple other locations for people struggling with substance use and homelessness. They plan to add taking meals and building relationships with isolated frail elderly folks in the future.

“The way you challenge addiction is connection” Judy Long

Once that relationship is built, they assist people with other parts of their lives, like navigating Medicaid, navigating Social Security, getting them to a hospital for procedures, etc. so they can help that person make positive changes in their lives. Often, they’re asked for Narcan, which they provide, as well as drug test strips. Casually keeping up with the folks they’ve all gotten to know, they share amongst themselves things like, this person’s still alive, this person went to rehab, this person’s doing well, this person’s not.

Something I hadn’t thought about was transportation. Engage will give people bus tickets to get to places they need to get to around town. The tradeoff for a bus ticket is taking a Narcan box, also.

In addition to outreach, Engage WNC will be organizing “Community Plates” in the Co-op’s courtyard. It’ll be another way to build community as folks and families can sit down, have family-style meals and conversations.

Where does the money come from to feed all these people? Judy explained that at this point they have limited funds and are building a budget, but they’re using food gleaned from Co-op excess that’s perfectly good, but isn’t fit for retail sales – the “ugly vegetables”.

Word’s beginning to spread. This past holiday season, a grocer didn’t sell a number of turkeys and donated them. A baker had extra pies that they donated. Ruth’s Chris recently donated hundreds of pounds of cleaned and prepared potatoes. At least once a week the owner of Hendersonville’s Blue Meadow Farms donates something. They’ve had many offers of help, but are building the coalition slowly, so they have infrastructure in place and aren’t overwhelmed.

At this point, they’re providing about 2,500 meals a month! I have a feeling that will hold steady, or more likely, grow. It’s anywhere from 75 to 150 meals a day, depending on the day and products they have to work with, but Chef Donnie thinks they have capacity for 1,000 meals a week (Monday through Friday) if there’s enough produce.

In addition to taking care of others, they make sure to take care of themselves, too, with a weekly communal meal for the team and others that are invited – like me. If you’ve been a volunteer, you probably know about burnout. A shared meal and conversation about the previous week helps. They refer to the meal as “Chef curated” because after a theme’s chosen, Donnie assigns courses. Each person brings a dish and during the meal, they pick a theme for the following week.

This is a group to watch. I expect we’ll be hearing more about them as they grow and expand. Along with so many other organizations in Hendersonville, they’re focused on helping the community as much as they possibly can.