There is a familiar face in the kitchen of God\u2019s Love We Deliver in SoHo. Celebrity chef Amanda Freitag is helping volunteers assemble 12,500 Thanksgiving meals for New Yorkers with life-altering illnesses.<\/p>\n
Freitag says she has a personal connection to the organization.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
God’s Love We Deliver will prepare and deliver 12,500 Thanksgiving meals
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The organization prepares and delivers meals to New Yorkers with life-altering illnesses
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God’s Love started 40 years ago and has prepared and delivered more than 40 million meals since then\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy friend actually used the services of God\u2019s Love and he got well, and he told me about it. We were working in a restaurant together, and he told me about his journey, and I said I want to meet these people. I want to know more about it. So that was in 2009, and I\u2019ve been involved ever since,\u201d Freitag said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
God\u2019s Love is celebrating 40 years of preparing and delivering meals for those New Yorkers who are too weak or sick to get to the grocery store or cook in their homes. It all started in 1985 as a response to the AIDS epidemic.<\/p>\n
The meals are medically tailored to help clients get well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dignity of getting a full meal, fully prepared, is just a game changer for people with illness,\u201d Terrence Meck, president and CEO of God\u2019s Love We Deliver, said.<\/p>\n
Office manager Pat Costello is well aware of the impact God\u2019s Love has had. She has been working with the organization since 1991, when she was a delivery driver.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started on Thursdays, we would meet and read off names of clients that we fed, and we had 162 names \u2014 that was 1991. We now have 15,000 clients, and it just blows my mind how much of a change and effect we have had on New York and life in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their annual Thanksgiving meal features all the good stuff: turkey, stuffing, sweet potato mash.<\/p>\n
Around 1,000 volunteers will make it happen on the big day, with tens of thousands more throughout the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are doing about 12,500 meals, and with the workforce: 99% is our volunteers so we are able to get our meals out to our clients,\u201d Curtis Wilson, executive sous chef, said.<\/p>\n