We again want to thank you for the support you’ve offered Irving Park Mutual Aid. It’s been roughly two months since our last update. We wanted to take some time to update y’all on what we’ve been up to.
We’ve maintained our main focus on food delivery. This is done using food rescued from across different sites in the city. Some are pantries, some are grocery stores, some are restaurants. This food is rescued, organized, bagged, and distributed with the help of the larger Northwise Side Mutual Aid community and the Chicago Food Sovereignty Coalition.
In partnership with them, we have invested $700 into a new warehouse space/lease. This place will act as a food hub on the Northwest side. We just began the move in process this weekend, and are looking forward to having a place where we can all gather. We hope to see you there soon.
Alongside the food delivery, we often bring our families care supplies. Usually that looks like cleaning supplies and diapers. In the past two months we spent $206 on care supplies. We usually spend more, but we were short handed volunteers and had to pull back some service offerings. We anticipate care supply spend to increase in the coming weeks. There are two folkx on our list that have special dietary requests, as well, which will add to the costs of our care supplies.
One community member needed help paying a medical bill to care for a family member. We were able to cover the $500 bill with the funds in this account. Additionally, someone needed help paying a phone bill, and we were able to cover the $166 with these funds.
In the coming months, we’ll be continuing our main mission: delivering food to community members who need it. We are still operating our distro days out of a parking lot in Belmont-Craigin and our food storage out of Urban Canopy in Pilsen. We will continue to do so till the new space is set up.
If there is more you’d like to hear about, please let us know. If you are interested in volunteering with us, or if you need any support - please email us: [email protected].
Thank you again, and we plan to share another update in the coming weeks.
