If it is Thursday you will see Olga at our MD distribution. Now look down. There will be our youngest, shortest, and cutest volunteer Issac - her five year old niño! Olga first came to us as a pastor of the church she and her husband started - Iglesia San Mateo 7:24 in order to ensure that the 100 members of her church could comer. Well, word travels and now she takes to the highways to deliver diapers, fruta y comida to four other immigrant-led congregations - including 58 burping bebés in MD!

If that were not enough, ella is a social justice sorceress and takes 50 lb. bags of frijoles y arroz and turns them into steaming hot meals that she and her team of 17 volunteers deliver to day-laborers and people who are unhoused. Finalmente, she was chosen by Puerto Rico to be a missionary.

Yelin makes it look easy. Food distribution for kindergartners. Might be because she takes care of children while doing food distribution! While most everyone is deeply grateful for the grocery bags we bring to their door, Yelin took it to the next level and decided to make it her passion to make sure her neighbors have enough to eat. Now 25 families - many of them who have the wriggling children she watches - receive fruta y verduras due to her leadership and extreme patience.

This also is not her first food rodeo: She has been active in her school community delivering to familias. She is proof that where there is a (food) will there is a (comida) way!

Stuck in a bind with no place to deliver 100 boxes of perishable food our coordinator immediately thought of Cecilia. She stood out for her tenacity and dedciation to her communidad. Cecilia's response was an emphatic yes and she has not stopped since. She takes it personally if people in her apartment complex are hungry.

Ahora no matter the weather or time she weekly makes sure 70 familias can put full plates on the table. Already a leader in her church her resume now has expanded. Shhh don't tell any children but she was our 6 am secret Santa xmas eve who distributed dozens of regalos with her husband to eager children!

Karla is famous for her onion hat! Lifting 50 pounds of onions and putting on her head and carrying it to her truck is just one of her many magic tricks. The most important is that 500 families weekly receive food as if by magic due to the extraordinary life-sustaining work of Karla and her husband Walter and their church: Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Monte de Los Olivos. Karla wears many hats with Food Justice including being on our Leadership Circle where she ensures Latin community needs are centered. Her powerful advocacy is a gift that does not stop giving!

Fenol's gentle spirit belies a fierce dedication to serve marginalized populations. His Haitian roots hold his heart and grew his destiny to meet the needs of his community. His new Haitian American congregation Berean Evangelical Church holds families in love, while by day he makes students have food as the University of Maryland Dining Services Manager. His strong leadership extends to our Leadership Circle where his voice grounds us in the truth of Haitian families living on the margins.

If Jose is not delivering food, he is delivering furniture! His heart burns with passion for migrant justice.

Like us, he began to distribute food when Covid struck and has not stopped. He was a founding member of one of our major partners So What Else, even waking up at 3 am to make sure they had enough produce. His secret sauce is finding migrant communities who others have forgotten including survivors of fires. While he is low- income, he still purchased a vehicle big enough to carry furniture and thousands of pounds of produce with his own funds.

Padre Vidal is both a man of the cloth and action within a few days of our first conversation he made sure our Thursday distribution was embedded at his congregation. Social justice in his DNA and a vision of a world where migrants are welcome drives him. He now leads the fastest growing Episcopal congregation in the U.S. and ensures that migrants who are undocumented or asylum seekers know they are welcome. Under his firecracker leadership the church feeds the soul and the stomach and ensures 500 people per month receive our reclaimed produce and beans and rice.