Trinity Church Serves Two Million Meals (So Far) and Gives Away Millions in Related Aid
Trinity Church has served in excess of two million meals to the needy in Lower Manhattan so far in 2023. Seven days each week, Trinity distributes food through a broad range of programs, largely staffed by volunteers. Compassion Meals offers hot, prepared food at breakfast Monday through Friday, lunch every day, and dinner on Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Compassion Market offers free grocery shopping. These on-site services at Trinity Church (89 Broadway) and Trinity Commons (76 Trinity Place) are supplemented by the Church’s support of 29 food pantries throughout Lower Manhattan. The program has also given away 392,000 meals through its holiday pack service, at Easter and Thanksgiving.
Although Trinity has offered free meals to locals facing food insecurity since 2009, the pace of its giving has ascended a steep gradient in recent years. In 2022, the Church similarly gave away one million free meals, but did not reach that milestone until December. This year, the one-million benchmark was surpassed on July 18, and the two millionth meal was served in early October. This means that Trinity was giving away approximately 5,025 meals every day for the first half of the year, but had ratcheted this tempo up to more than 12,000 meals each day for the period between July and October. As of Tuesday, the current total is 2,080,366 meals served this year.
That prodigious jump in output has been largely driven by Trinity’s response to the influx of refugee immigrants into New York City in 2022 and 2023. More than 100,000 such visitors have now arrived. Roughly one percent of this total is housed at the 50-story Holiday Inn steps away from Trinity Church, at 99 Washington Street (near Rector Place), which has been commandeered entirely for emergency housing. This facility has been a particular focus of Trinity’s outreach.
“Folks look forward to the lunches and dinners we serve, because they know that they’ll get a hot meal,” reflects Alberto Cruz, Trinity’s director of Family & Community Support. “For a lot of them, it’s the only hot meal they’ll get all week. Yes, some of our guests work on Wall Street, but they don’t make Wall Street money. But everybody deserves to feel welcome, rather than ‘needy.’”
In addition to food assistance, Trinity is meeting the migrant crisis with a wide spectrum of complementary services, such as clothing, toiletry and hygiene kits, English-language classes, workforce development, and recurring workshops that provide information on everything from immigration and health to housing rights. Separately, Trinity has awarded more than $2.2 million in grants to nonprofits working directly with asylum-seekers since the influx began.
“As asylum seekers come to New York City, with 10,000 more arriving monthly,” says Rev. Phil Jackson, the Rector of Trinity Church, “their arrival has been the subject of a constant barrage of news and noise. Meeting the needs of this growing community may seem an overwhelming, if not impossible, task. But it’s not. In fact, it’s the very work we’re here to do.”
Although Trinity funds its food assistance operations through its own resources, the Church is seeking volunteers to help staff the programs. For information about volunteering, click here. For those seeking to contribute financially, Trinity is accepting donations through its Virtual Winter Coat Drive, which is being hosted on Amazon.