Providence Cristo Rey High School provides a variety of resources for their students – all of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch and receive scholarships to attend the school. Sister Kathleen Yeadon, the school’s Family Outreach Coordinator, manages many of these resources, like offering gifts at Christmas or [...]
CEO Jennifer Vigran speaks to Second Helpings staff and volunteers on March 18, the one-year anniversary of our grab-and-go meals, a symbol of our COVID response. When schools in Marion County closed in March last year, the impact on Second Helpings was dramatic and instantaneous. While the [...]
It goes without saying that this year was unlike any other. The challenges and opportunities presented to Second Helpings in 2020 would have been unimaginable before they came our way. While the COVID-19 pandemic was certainly the story that defined this year for us all, we’d like to take [...]
Earlier this month, Second Helpings delivered the 15,000,000th meal of our 22-year mission to #FeedIndy. Based on previous years’ operations and initial predictions for 2020, Second Helpings reached this milestone nearly a year earlier than originally expected. This quickened pace to produce more meals is in response to the [...]
The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced nearly every aspect of Second Helpings’ operations from the changing food supply to the growing need for meals. This health crisis also changed our volunteer workforce. Many people chose to restrict their ventures outside the home, due to higher risk factors or other challenges. [...]
“Normally” Second Helpings provides meals to community organizations – churches, shelters, community centers, after-school programs and many others share Second Helpings meals with their neighbors, clients and students. That’s happening during the coronavirus outbreak as well, but something kept haunting us – who was getting left behind during this [...]
In 2008, I was a new Second Helpings Board member. At my first board retreat we recognized that there was something wrong with a hunger relief system where the organizations responsible for the work didn’t know, understand, or talk to each other. From those discussions arose what would eventually [...]
For two decades, the Sahm family and their restaurants have supported Second Helpings. Yesterday, opened a new chapter in that relationship. It started with an email from Eddie Sahm at 2:07 Sunday morning. By Friday, Sahm’s Cafeteria in the OneAmerica tower had become Second Helpings’ first satellite kitchen, delivering [...]
Last Thursday was a day most of us will likely never forget. While Second Helpings had planned for weeks for the possibility of a COVID-19 outbreak, like everyone else in our society, even with plans in place, we were in untested waters. For more than two decades our charitable [...]
There are times when the world around us changes at a blistering speed. Thursday, March 12th was one of those days. Thursday, 5 p.m. The announcement of school closures Thursday evening was immediately followed by afterschool and other program cancellations. Thousands of meals that were prepared and ready to [...]