BOROUGH PARK, Brooklyn (PIX11) – The work of the Masbia Soup Kitchen Network in Borough Park is so crucial that people lined up in the bitter cold on Monday to get food to feed their families — but executive director Alex Rapaport said the organization was just hit with a big set back.
“We were getting, every week, two to three dozen trailers worth of fresh produce from the city’s pandemic relief program and that is all gone,” Rapaport said.
An emergency food distribution program created during the pandemic’s peak is now seeing cuts. Rapaport said the city’s Department of Social Services is limiting orders on fruits and vegetables. The program is funded by the federal government with COVID relief money.
“We have now a gap of over $1 million dollars worth of fresh produce that are not going to be coming to us,” Rapaport said.
Masbia is relying on donor money and is also digging into its reserves: a backup food supply with mostly canned and dry food; not the fresh produce originally being distributed.
“We are trying to make up that food volume in many ways,” Rapaport added. “It’s especially sad that it happened right before Passover, when our need historically is at the highest.”
The organization serves people of all ethnic backgrounds, but Rappaport said what they normally give out in the two weeks leading up to Passover is equal to three months of food. They’ve secured a warehouse that can fit over 100 pallettes worth of items and they plan to feed 20,000 families for the holiday.
The network is working to make sure families not only have food for Passover Seder, but kosher meals for the eight-day holiday.
The organization is also changing its distribution plan for large families who will get their food delivered instead of having to wait on line. Helping with those deliveries will be DoorDash: the company will be donating deliveries to make sure that families get food in time for Passover and every other day of the week.
PIX11 News reached out to the DSS for comment on the program’s cuts and has not heard back.
