COVID RELIEF FUND
R2B recognized early in the pandemic that many communities throughout the Bay Area would be immediately and severely impacted. As a result, we quickly mobilized a relief fund to support community organizations that could reach families and individuals directly while they were awaiting the development of local, state, and federal response programs.
Rapid funding was provided to initiate the following programs:
TNDC houses 5,800 people in nearly 4,000 apartments and SROs. When Shelter in Place led to school closures, more than 2,500 children in the Tenderloin were home and no longer receiving meals from SFUSD. Additionally some 100 food pantries closed across San Francisco. With our COVID relief support, TNDC was able to get weekly groceries and fresh produce into the hands of their pantry participants and tenants, provide delivery services to those who couldn’t leave their homes, and provide food to additional community members including Tenderloin children.
CCDC serves a community that has over 6,000 units of SRO housing, all of which have communal kitchens and bathrooms. This communal living situation left the community particularly vulnerable to COVID infections, especially as escalating unemployment and shelter in place led to increased need for the use of community kitchens. With our COVID relief support, CCDC launched a commercial community kitchen meal takeout program (Feed + Fuel) to produce up to 800 meals daily, while also allowing restaurants to re-employ 20-40 of their former employees.
MEDA quickly recognized the challenges that COVID would present to its Latinx immigrant community. With our COVID relief support, MEDA launched the Mission Families Relief Fund to provide immediate financial relief to families living in the Mission Promise Neighborhood. These funds were used to buy groceries, pay rent, and purchase technology to assist with distance learning.
Mission Graduates provides a wide range of programming which emphasizes college as a means to achieve economic equity for low income, Latinx, Black, and immigrant youth and their families. Our COVID relief support offered emergency needs funding to 200 students or families in the Mission Graduates community. Funds were used for rent support, cell phone and utility payments, computers, food, emergency transportation needs, medications, and COVID-19 protective gear.