Partnering with Local Organizations to Help Our Neighbors

At the end of October, Grace families gathered for the annual Family Community Service Day.

Organized by the Parents’ Association, the event brought volunteers together to prepare over 500 bagged lunches for the Red Door Place’s community meal program. One of Grace’s longstanding partners, The Red Door Place is a hunger relief and economic empowerment program started at The Church of The Village in Greenwich Village. Kids of all ages joined in the fun, making sandwiches and decorating lunch bags for members of the local community. 

A week later, a group of Grace volunteers, including parents, children, and staff, traveled to the Bronx for the School’s third “Produce Party,” a partnership with Grassroots Grocery organized by the Parent Sustainability Group. The morning began with the team unloading a truck filled with unsold produce rescued from Hunt’s Point Produce Market, the biggest produce market in the US. Volunteers then sorted and packaged the fruits and vegetables and loaded them into cars. The last—and most rewarding—part of the experience occurred when volunteers were able to #driveouthunger by transporting and distributing the goods to local community centers. 

Grassroots Grocery embraces a “neighbors helping neighbors” philosophy, and Grace community members were able to do just that. Together with over 200 other volunteers from peer schools, companies, and nonprofit organizations, they delivered 11,887 pounds of fresh produce to 27 communities in Harlem and the Bronx. This included: 102 boxes of blackberries, 44 boxes of lettuce, 29 boxes of turnips, 48 boxes of mangoes, 59 boxes of kale, 88 boxes of squash, 49 boxes of peppers, 44 boxes of apples, 44 boxes of brussels sprouts, and 133 boxes of cucumbers. This produce, which would have otherwise ended up in landfills, instead was used to combat food insecurity in our city