In April, the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans announced a partnership with the Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana, Humana, Metairie Bank, and the Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest to launch the Greater New Orleans Jewish Community Healthcare Workers Take Home Meal Program. On June 30, the program wrapped up (for now).
Originally, the program was intended to serve 5,000 take home meals to frontline medical staff and hospital workers at three area hospitals over an eight week period – Ochsner Health, Touro Infirmary, and Tulane Medical Center – but because of the generosity of donors like you, we were able to expand the program to include East Jefferson General Hospital and New Orleans East Hospital, as well as an additional two weeks of meals. In total, 6,600 meals were served to our community heroes, from the intensive care unit to the laundry room.
We were also able to support three small Jewish businesses in our community: Dvash Catering, Kosher Cajun, and Rimon at Tulane Hillel. Each week, our area kosher caterers would create hundreds of delicious and healthy meals for our frontline workers.
“There’s a Jewish value – tikkun olam – which means that we’re all asked to do our part to repair the world, Jewish and non-Jewish alike,” said Arnie D. Fielkow, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. “From helping area small businesses to tending to healthcare workers too exhausted to cook, this program allowed us to help so many people in a unique way, across five major hospitals in our community. Every meal is a step towards repairing the world.”
The program was largely funded by the Jewish Endowment Foundation of Louisiana, Humana, Metairie Bank, the Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest, Baptist Community Ministries, and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans. A number of individual donors gave to the program, too, which led to the expansion of the program’s footprint. The Jewish Federation is deeply appreciative of the support of our community partners, individual donors, and the dozens of volunteers from the Greater New Orleans Jewish community who helped distribute the meals across area hospitals each Tuesday.
On June 30, we publicly thanked our catering partners and volunteers, and thanked the frontline workers who have worked so hard to keep us safe. Check out the video here: www.facebook.com/jeworleans/videos/