EAST AURORA, N.Y. — For our Most Buffalo Story of the Day, 2 On Your Side is taking you to East Aurora where volunteers are working together to feed thousands of our hungry neighbors and keep them safe from drug overdoses.
They are part of the group Buffalo Resilience, and on Tuesday, we got to speak with the man who started it all.
Phil McNamara started Buffalo Resilience as a response to COVID-19 in 2020, and the group has continued to grow. At first, they were making masks.
"When I started getting connected to the community, the real need for other resources, not just COVID masks, kind of became apparent. That's when the restaurant industry really stepped up," says Phil McNamara, founder of Buffalo Resilience.
Buffalo Resilience is out there helping its community partners year-round by providing meals and harm reduction training and tools, like Narcan, to people in need.
"I have a background in addiction counseling, and I also come from the service industry, so something unique that Buffalo Resilience does is we try and join those two things. We draw in local bars and restaurants and we attempt to connect those to community agencies and community organizations that are helping underserved communities around Buffalo and Erie County," said Phil McNamara.
Buffalo Resilience trains people who work at bars and restaurants to recognize when someone might be overdosing on opioids. Volunteers will come and train any staff.
The group also provides meals to people and responds to emergencies like the 5/14 shooting and the 2022 Christmas blizzard. Restaurants from across Western New York donate extra food so it isn't just thrown out.
"What I get is what I get and, you know, just pull stuff out of the recipe book, things we've had, you know, we've got a bunch of chickpeas, we're having chana masala," said Chef Tony Martina.
Chef Tony Martina got involved when McNamara called him and told him Buffalo Resilience was pivoting from masks to food distribution and harm reduction.
"And the challenge originally was how far can $100 go? So I was presented with that idea, I found it to be kind of fun, and we really just kind of started running with it," said Tony Martina.
They started putting as much food together as they could by working out of the Left Coast Taco production kitchen in East Aurora.
"This is what I do is I cook, and I've found an outlet to help those around me with what I do every day. I personally like to challenge people in my life and say, hey, if you're a carpenter, this is what you can do. You build stuff. Go fix somebody's porch or bathroom or something, that's what you do, that's easy for you. This is very easy for me, so that's what I do," said Tony Martina.
McNamara says they could benefit from more food donations. Restaurants can donate extra food from catering, food waste, or extra they buy specifically to donate to Buffalo Resilience.
"Maybe once a quarter, if they could stretch to once a month that would be fantastic. We have found since 2022, we've fed over 20,000 people, and we've done that with the help of a small number of restaurants. Obviously, the more people that get involved, the more people we can feed," said Phil McNamara.