Jackie
Within the first week of COVID-19 cases reported in New Mexico, shoppers’ voices echoed through grocery stores – the shelves too empty to absorb the casual sounds of shopping carts or the whispering of scared patrons stocking up on goods for the foreseeable future. With stores running low on essential items and restaurants shutdown, access to food became an immediate threat to the health and well-being of New Mexicans throughout the state.
The problem heightened as schools closed, reducing the amount of food provided to low-income children and families. For those individuals experiencing homelessness, there were fewer locations available to receive warm meals, and fears of a spreading virus ran through shelters. And then there was the rising number of COVID positive patients who remained in isolation – in their homes or in COVID hotels – who had limited options to access food. The need for nutrition was critical to grow stronger, but the ability to shop or cook was nearly impossible for sick individuals.
For over 20 years in Santa Fe, Youthworks has offered a continuum of services designed to reconnect “at-risk” and disadvantaged youth with the community through education, employment training, and job placement. As COVID spread through Santa Fe, Youthworks was tapped by the city and county to embark on the herculean effort of providing hot meals to low-income families, people experiencing homelessness and residents in COVID hotels.
By March 30, 2020, young people in the Youthworks culinary program began preparing take-and-go boxes for breakfast, lunch and dinner – cooking out of the commercial kitchen at El Rancho de las Golondrinas Living History Museum in La Cienega. Soon, they were preparing meals for Consuelo’s Place – a quickly transformed midtown emergency shelter that had once served as college dorms for the Santa Fe College of Art and Design.
Jackie Gibbs, the Youthworks Culinary Director, was an emancipated teen at 16 years old and experienced homelessness in the years that followed. Now at 33, she helped provide over 190,000 meals during COVID to those who needed food in her community. This is her story, in her own words.
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I’m the Culinary Director for Youthworks. I’m actually a graduate of the program. I came to Youthworks when I was sixteen years old – homeless, dropped out of school and I was doing pretty bad in my life. I was using drugs and really struggling with where I was at in life. Sometimes I feel like, if I lose the place where I live, I could fall back to being homeless. But, I know how to survive, and I’m going to survive regardless of whether I have a place.
When the virus hit, Youthworks stepped up to feel homeless people and COVID positive patients in Santa Fe. The county and the city called us to ask for our help. We served over 190,000 meals in 2020. We worked with World Central Kitchen and Santa Fe Community College. At the beginning, there were all COVID positive people at Consuelo's Place at the mid-town campus. No one knew where to put them, and we were the first people to start feeding them. There were no microwaves or anything for hot meals. They just opened up dorms and started putting people in there.
There was also a need for people who had cars to go pick up food. We’d drive up to people’s houses and go to the grocery stores to pick up food for people and deliver it. We had an army of kids – we literally just put our resources together and went out into the community. We cooked 1,000 – 1,500 meals a day. Sandwiches, packaging boxes – then we started doing summer meals. We were at the schools handing out sack lunches, breakfasts, curbside pickup. We did food distribution partnering with the Food Depot and World Central Kitchen.
There were some families who couldn’t make it to the Food Depot or any of the other distribution sites. So, we would go in our vans with coolers to trailer parks and handout meals there. We’d stand for two hours in front of the trailer park asking people if they needed food. Anyone who needed it, we just gave it no questions asked. We just tried to keep our people fed.
The first time I did a COVID run, it was two days after the shutdown. There were no masks – nobody could find them anywhere. No one really knew how to keep themselves safe yet. Patients were staying at the Sage Inn downtown and I had to do a food drop off. A person had been standing outside, and I didn’t notice at first that when I got to the door and knocked, he was the same person who had been outside. I had really close contact with him and I got a little scared, but I was fine. We all just had to learn how to adapt.
I went into survivor mode. I’m just like a warrior and I’m always going to keep going and help. I knew exactly what to do. I knew exactly how to take care of my community because I had struggled with having to get food of my own, and being homeless. All of that really helped me know what to do, and I think that’s how I was able to help lead the culinary program through those days.
To me, it was just another day. When I fed the Consuelo's Place residents and took the food to the COVID clients and to home delivery clients, I looked at every day like it was a war. Every day, I was trying to make sure these people had food because they couldn’t get it themselves. I guess I always take it that seriously. But, when things like this happen, there has to be a way to keep going. You can’t think, “There’s no way, there’s no way. There’s no way to get them food.” You have to find a way.
What kept us going was knowing that we also needed that same help. My workers were part of those communities where we were serving food; they lived there; they knew people who were coming to pick up food. People responded to us differently because they saw us as peers in the community. We’re not above anybody. We try to work as a community – to bring everyone together.
