Park Slope soup kitchen and food pantry CHiPS launches new mobile service ahead of the holidays to help feed hungry Brooklynites.
Photo courtesy of CHiPS
It’s giving…season.
The Community Help in Park Slope is going the extra mile this holiday season for hungry Brooklynites with a new mobile food pantry.
The nonprofit better known as CHiPS launched more than 50 years ago, helping homeless and food insecure people in the community through its full-service soup kitchen and food pantry. The organization, open six days a week, also offers temporary housing to expectant single mothers.
In the shadow of the city’s ongoing migrant crisis, CHiPS is serving up more hot meals than ever. Organizers say the kitchen is currently dishing out upwards of 400 servings a day at their Fourth Avenue location — more than twice that was served up daily last year — due in large part to the thousands of immigrants being bussed into the Big Apple.
In order to meet the demand for hot meals and produce, CHiPS has established a mobile pantry service with two stops in Brooklyn to distribute food.
“The intention was to kind of access more folks that are a little bit outside of walking distance to CHiPS, and distribute pantry bags remotely,” CHiPS Executive Director Peter Endriss told Brooklyn Paper. “We have two locations so far. On Tuesdays, we distribute at Gowanus Houses — a NYCHA facility around the corner from us — and then on Wednesdays we’re at PS 124, which is a public elementary school that serves a lot of families that live in the WIN shelters adjacent to it.”
Endriss said the nonprofit’s decision to hit the road came about because CHiPS wanted to expand upon existing services without encroaching on other organizations that serve the area.
“Being able to distribute remotely allowed us to double the size, instantly double, and hopefully quadruple the size of our pantry program without having new real estate,” Endriss said. “So…
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