BUFFALO, N.Y. — The outbreak of the coronavirus has changed many things in Buffalo.
Perhaps one thing that it hasn’t changed, however, is the spirit of the City of Good Neighbors.
After completing a recent outreach to hand out thousands of masks to residents on Buffalo’s East Side, a national ministry with Buffalo roots is now turning its attention to feeding those in need.
“We believe in loving and serving the brokenhearted and right now in Buffalo there’s a lot of people who are brokenhearted. They feel like they have no hope and they don’t know where to turn,” said Steve Tybor, a Buffalo native who is President and CEO of Eight Days of Hope, a ministry based in Tupelo, Mississippi.
“They’ve lost jobs, they don’t know where to turn, and some are even afraid to leave their homes,”
According to Tybor, a recurrent theme emerged when the volunteers recently fanned out to deliver masks to those seeking to use them to potentially protect themselves from the coronavirus.
“When we asked people how they were doing, we kept hearing them ask us, do you have any food?” Tybor recalled. “I just went home that night and cried.”
The answer to the situation was the creation of a program called Feed Buffalo, which aims to supply a week’s worth of groceries to 1,000 families in need as identified by local churches.
Inside a warehouse on Kensington Avenue on Thursday, several volunteers packed foodstuffs that will be delivered this weekend.
“They’ll get seven breakfasts, seven lunches, seven dinners and some snacks," Tybor said. “This outreach will run us about $125,000 and every dollar raised will be spent on food.”
Local churches can still submit the names of up to ten families they know to be in need of groceries, by visiting the Eight Days of Hope website and clicking on the Feed Buffalo icon.
“This is the perfect time for the church to shine," Tybor said.
According to Tybor, the deliveries will be made in accordance with social distancing protocols.
“We’ll pack up the food and take it to their homes, leave it on the porch, and then wait outside where maybe we’ll give them a wave, blow them a kiss or maybe give them a thumbs up. We’ll tell them that we love them and that they been forgotten,” Tybor said.
The outbreak of coronavirus has changed many things in Buffalo.
But perhaps one thing that it hasn’t change … is the spirit of the City of Good Neighbors.