St. John's Bread & Life step up to provide relief in Sandy aftermath

St. John’s Bread & Life a vital resource in the wake of Sandy

When Hurricane Sandy hit New York Tony Butler, executive director of St. John's Bread & Life, said although he was prepared for the worst, he was not expecting what was to come.

“I always downplay the weather,” Butler told the Irish Voice.

The 51-year-old Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn resident cycled his bike to work during the storm, determined to keep the Brooklyn-based charity open for business.

Since Hurricane Sandy St. John's Bread & Life, an emergency food program and social services agency, has witnessed an unprecedented surge in food service output.

“Since Sandy we have doubled the amount of work we are doing. We went from distributing 2,200 meals a day to 4,400 meals,” Butler said.

With the agency’s bright orange mobile soup kitchen packed to the brim, Butler and his crew drove down to Coney Island on Halloween, just two days after the storm. The scene was eerily unfamiliar, Butler recalled.

“It looked like one big beach… a really gross beach,” Butler recalled.

“What first shocked me was when we were on Mermaid Avenue, it was all sand. All the way down the street, it looked like they put buildings on the beach.”

Almost two months on, St. John's Bread & Life is continuing its efforts to help New Yorkers affected by the storm.

“We have people in public housing coming into us who have no heat still,” Butler said.

As well as serving thousands of meals per day from its base at 795 Lexington Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, the organization also provides an estimated 600 meals through its mobile soup kitchen.

Responding to the needs of Sandy victims is just one of the many services offered by St. John’s Bread & Life, which was originally founded in 1982 as a work of St. John the Baptist parish.

“It started because of budget cuts,” Butler explained.

“Around 1981/’82 when all those cuts happened, New York City had approximately 16 emergency food providers. By 1984, there were 1,600 because an entire safety net with food stamps was gone.”

With the generosity of St. John the Baptist parish, the organization was able to respond beyond the parish boundaries and evolve into an independent institution that works closely with one of New York’s most prominent Catholic universities.

“We had always had a long standing partnership with St. John’s University,” Butler explained.

Thirty years since its inception, St. John’s Bread & Life continues to address issues of poverty in Brooklyn and Queens, serving over 500,000 meals annually.

Since Butler began his tenure in 2005, staff numbers have tripled and the organization moved to its new 22,000-square foot multi-million dollar facility in 2008.

With a background in technology, Butler led the introduction of New York’s first digital food pantry which distributes uncooked meals and toiletries.

The digital food pantry allows guests of Bread & Life to select, on-screen, the items in the pantry they desire.  To encourage healthy eating habits, and contrary to most stores and supermarkets, nutritious items cost less.

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Nster.com