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SPRING VALLEY − The shiny blue and sparkly silver food truck sat, generator humming, prepping meals on a recent Thursday in the side lot of Memorial Park.
It was just the fourth trip for the new mobile kitchen operated by Helping Hands For the Homeless of Rockland, an interfaith volunteer organization that provides support for people who are homeless and food insecure.
Helping Hands has long participated in the Rockland Interfaith Breakfast Program that provides food from 7-8 a.m., Monday through Friday, at the Church of the Nazarene on Church Street in Spring Valley. About 160 meals are distributed daily: 80 hot breakfasts and 80 bagged lunches for visitors to take with them.
The mobile kitchen is an extension of this mission, a way to make new, hot food available to everyone who wants it.
“We don’t turn anyone away,” said Helping Hands Executive Director Anna Kobelka, between greeting people coming by to pick up food and taking her turn at the window fulfilling orders.
About 52 hot dishes were served free of charge to everyone who arrived on a rainy Thursday when temperatures hovered around 40 degrees. On the menu were Philly cheese steaks, with fries and onion rings and coleslaw or macaroni. A bottle of water is included in a takeaway bag.
On Dec. 28, Michelangelo Giordano, a volunteer and Helping Hands board member, was at the grill.
The cellular kitchen, a tradition built for Helping Hands, refrigeration, oven, six-burner stove, stove and deep fryer. Kobelka said they added a rice cooker and an Instant Pot.
The nonprofit first looked at renting a food truck, but found it more cost-effective to design its own, Kobelka said. Bill Baretz, board president of Helping Hands, worked with a vendor in Miami to build the kitchen to meet the organization’s needs.
The truck, the winter one, is parked in Memorial Park, just behind the Church of the Nazarene. As the team prepared for the Dec. 28 food distribution, a woman came over to ask if socks were available. Artie Ghaffri, a Helping Hands volunteer, was able to run up the back stairs of the church and retrieve something for herself.
The Spring Valley site is also a few blocks from the town’s transit station, which is a jumping-off point for the commute to and from the county’s warming center at the Yeager Center in Pomona, which passes by the Catholic Charities of Rockland County network facility.
“Spring Valley is home to the largest group of homeless and food-insecure people,” Kobelka said. But the need exists in the country, and as the climate warms, cellular cooking will be rolled out in more regions.
The truck has performed four since it entered service in late November. The mobile kitchen supplies an average of one dinner distribution per week.
Kobelka plans to take the truck 3 times a week to other locations, when spring arrives. He said the truck could go alone to Nyack on days when Soup Angels rarely offers food to the First Reformed Church downtown. He said two recent pantry closures at Stony Point have created more desires in North Rockland.
The volunteer-led effort provides others with what they need, Kobelka said, from warm clothing to a hot meal to links to addiction treatment and other medical care.
Helping Hands also has portable showers in Memorial Park and other communities, but they are suspended during the colder months.
Helping Hands purchases some of the food they use for their breakfast and cell kitchen projects, and also accesses food from the Northeast New York Regional Food Bank and distributions at Clover Stadium in Pomona and People to People in Nanuet.
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While Baretz took care of the logistics of the cellular kitchen, the concept was a dream of Bert Hughes, one of the original organizers of the interfaith breakfast program Helping Hands of Rockland, who died in August at age 79.
The organization works with government, places of worship, nonprofit organizations, and anyone else who can help others access assistance with complex needs. Volunteer opportunities are available – visit rocklandassistanceinghands. com for more information.
Nancy Cutler writes about people
This article appeared in Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Rockland homeless get food from a mobile kitchen set up by volunteers.
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