While restaurants have been hit hard by pandemic-related closings, two in East Cobb have teamed up to help those in need with their holiday meals.
Paradise Grille (3605 Sandy Plains Road) and Lucia’s Italian Restaurant (4705 Woodstock Road) have organized what they’re calling “feed a family” food trees at both restaurants, with the proceeds benefitting those served by MUST Ministries.
Here’s MUST explaining how the process works:
“Each tree is covered with $50 gift certificates that will pay for a family meal for 6. Every Family Meal gift card will be delivered to MUST Ministries before Christmas Day to distribute among our families.”
So when you purchase a gift certificate, the restaurants will then put together the meals as indicated in the flyers above. In addition to helping needy families enjoy a Christmas dinner, you’ll also be helping the restaurants.
Here’s more from the restaurants:
Purchase a gift certificate and we will display your family name, on your star, on the walls beside our trees.
Let’s fill our walls with Stars and help Must take care of less fortunate friends this holiday season
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Rev. Ike Reighard said he realized how serious COVID-19 was going to be when churches and casinos closed at the same time in March, as lockdowns began.
Rev. Ike Reighard
“When Heaven and Hell agree, we ought to take note,” quipped the senior pastor at Piedmont Church in East Cobb and president and CEO of MUST Ministries.
He told an in-person and online meeting of the East Cobb Business Association Tuesday that one of Cobb County’s prominent non-profits had its hands full tending to the crushing need for food, clothing, shelter and job assistance as pandemic-related closings threw thousands out of work and homes, and needing help providing the basics for their families.
Before they could do that, he said, the MUST staff had to reorganize its own staff, especially since they couldn’t rely on a volunteer army of around 17,000.
Instead of serving around 33,000 people in a typical year in an eight-county area, MUST has provided some form of help to nearly 125,000 people since March alone.
“We’ve already quadrupled what we do in an entire year,” Reighard said.
That includes more than a million meals, a million pounds of food for direct distribution and via pantries, putting up 238 households in motels when the MUST shelter closed and serving 78,000 total households in one form or another.
Another 400,000 meals have been provided to school students over the summer, in conjunction with the Cobb County School District, as well as other partnerships.
“To witness how people come together like this is one of the most encouraging things I’ve ever seen,” he said. As overwhelming as the needs have been, “even more overwhelming is the generosity of this community.”
He was asked to inspire business leaders who like so many have been adversely affected by the economic impact of the response to the virus.
Brimming with his usual enthusiasm, Reighard said the only way to approach such daunting challenges is that “you have to choose your attitude.
“We decided we would have to rise above the situation. We weren’t going to shut our doors. We just couldn’t disappear in our community when our community needs us the most.”
He said his staff had to “get really creative” when its main food supplier, the Atlanta Community Food Bank, became overwhelmed with requests from other non-profits.
MUST volunteers helped distribute student meals at various schools that were paid through the federal school lunch program.
With the Cobb County School District phasing in classroom returns next month, Reighard said work is finishing on restocking 39 food pantries in some of those and other schools.
Next month, MUST will break ground on a new 130-bed shelter on its current campus on Cobb Parkway near Bells Ferry Road. It’s the first phase of a two-phase process to nearly double capacity, as construction will continue into MUST’s 50th year in 2021.
Reighard said while needs in the community will remain high and the challenges to provide basic services will prove considerable, “let’s not let that define us.
“We’ve got a lot of obstacles ahead of us, but we’re going to get through this. The best is yet to come.”
MUST continues to accept donations at its donation center (1280 Field Parkway, Marietta), from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For information on making financial contributions, click here.
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The leaders of several Cobb non-profits who’ve received county funding in the past are asking commissioners continue the practice, although there’s no money at all for them in the proposed fiscal year 2020 budget.
Irene Barton, Cobb Collaborative
At a budget hearing earlier this week, representatives of some of the 15 community organizations who’ve received a total of $850,000 in the current FY 2019 budget said the small figures they receive from Cobb government enable them to get matching funds that are vital to the work that they do.
“Non-profits are working together to address critical issues,” said Irene Barton, an East Cobb resident who is the executive director of the Cobb Collaborative.
It’s an umbrella organization that received $42,500 this year to help coordinate grant funding of around $3.1 million.
The critical needs include addressing those who are homeless and ex-offenders, those in family poverty situations and for health and wellness issues.
Those were the four criteria Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce proposed last year for organizations to receive county founding. But after commissioners approved the FY 2019 budget, Boyce acknowledged there wasn’t the political support (commissioners Bob Ott and JoAnn Birrell of East Cobb have been opposed) to continue the funding.
The Center for Family Resources, which focuses on homelessness issues, is getting $141,000 this year, the largest amount of county spending, followed by the Davis Direction Association ($120,000), which fights drug and opioid addiction.
SafePath Children’s Advocacy Center receives $81,000, the Atlanta Community Food Bank $70,000, MUST Ministries $53,000 and the Tommy Nobis Center $45,000.
Barton said in her remarks to the commissioners that the non-profits have worked with government agencies, other non-profits and faith communities, but “no one group can fund this alone.
“Some may feel that that taxpayers’ dollars should not fund these agencies. If these services are not funded, who will provide them?”
As she did last week, State Rep. Mary Frances Williams, a Marietta Democrat who represents part of East Cobb, also urged commissioners to provide non-profit funding.
“I really worry that your minds are already made up,” she said. “Once this money is gone, it’s hard to get a chunk of money like this back in the process.”
A Cobb resident at Tuesday’s budget hearing disagreed. Patricia Hay argued that “it’s not government’s job to take care of people. It’s just not.”
The Cobb commissioners will hold a final budget hearing at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, prior to final adoption. The meeting takes place in the second floor board room of the Cobb government building, 100 Cherokee St., in downtown Marietta.
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MUST Ministries has been a growing beacon in the local community for the homeless and families who need a hand up for the past 47 years.
Recently they have put out an urgent SOS for food items they are critically low on for their local Cobb County food pantries which serve an average of 345 families per month.
The Janice Overbeck Real Estate Team with Keller Williams is holding an ongoing food drive for MUST at their office located at 2249 Roswell Road in East Cobb.
Items can be dropped off there or can be arranged for pick up by calling 404-585-8881.
The items they need include but are not limited to canned meats, canned fruits, canned vegetables and other non-perishable grocery items.
To learn more about the current food pantry needs or make a donation online visit bit.ly/MM-FOOD.
Photo: Janice Overbeck and Tom Gonter, MUST Ministries.
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Rev. Ike Reighard of MUST Ministries opens the Brumby Elementary School food pantry with students, volunteers and staff. (Cobb County School District photos)
The 31st school in Cobb and Marietta schools to be provided with a food pantry had a ribbon-cutting Thursday. The Brumby Elementary School food pantry is now open to students as part of the non-profit’s Save It Forward initiative.
The pantries are located primarily at Title I public schools in the county to address hunger and nutrition needs for at-risk students.
In the Save It Forward program, volunteer shoppers receive weekly e-mail lists for items that cost less than $6 each. Those items, which also include toiletries, are then stocked on the shelves at the school pantries for students and their families who need them.
Partial funding for the pantries also comes from the United Way of Greater Atlanta. More than 3,000 Cobb students and their families are served by the school pantries.
On hand for Thursday’s event were Cobb Board of Education member Scott Sweeney and State Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, as well as members of the Rotary Club of East Cobb, which is involved extensively with community service projects at Brumby Elementary School.
Rev. Reighard meets with Charlene Brisco, the Brumby social worker.
Other Save It Forward schools in East Cobb include Lassiter and Sprayberry high schools and McCleskey Middle School.
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Lingering issues over Cobb non-profit funding have been put on hold by county commissioners, who want more time to go over proposals to spend $850,000 for grants to 15 local community service providers.
Rev. Ike Reighard
At last week’s commissioners meeting, they agreed to delay action, possibly to Sept. 25 when they meet again to conduct regular business.
The funding has been set aside in the fiscal year 2019 budget commissioners adopted in July, and would be distributed over the next two years.
Most of the organizations are part of the Cobb Collaborative, an umbrella organization that coordinates non-profit county grant funding.
Last year, commissioners changed the criteria for awarding grants to non-profits. The agencies must provide services related to homelessness, family stability and poverty, ex-offender re-entry and workforce development, and health and wellness.
According to Cobb deputy county manager Jackie McMorris, the Cobb Collaborative received 27 applications for grant funding, totaling $1.8 million, before making the recommendations contained in the chart below.
Several leaders of those non-profits on the recommended list spoke at Tuesday’s meeting about how they spend that money, and how it’s still needed.
Jeri Barr of the Center for Family Resources, which focuses on homelessness issues, said losing that funding “could be a death-knell for a number of non-profits.”
CFR would receive $141,339 under the current grant recommendation, the largest for any of the non-profit agencies on the list. Of that amount, $127,205 would be used directly for homeless-related programs, especially housing assistance.
“We help hundreds of families stay in their homes” with financial assistance that includes rent payments, she said, adding that that kind of stability keeps kids in schools.
Because of its Cobb grant funding, CFR also gets a federal match from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Barr said.
MUST Ministries, which is best known for operating a homeless shelter in Cobb, also provides housing and employment services for its clients.
The non-profit reported 2017 revenues of $10.6 million, and would receive $53,002 in Cobb grant funding under the proposal.
Rev. Ike Reighard, senior pastor at the Piedmont Church in East Cobb and the MUST president and CEO, told commissioners that of that $52,002, two-thirds of it, or around $35,000, goes for shelter services.
The remainder would be used for providing employment services for clients in the South Cobb area.
“You’ve been great partners to us over the years,” Reighard said.
Commissioners expressed some differences not only on how to spend the money, but whether to do it at all.
South Cobb commissioner Lisa Cupid was upset that other agencies weren’t included on the list that serve her community.
Commissioner JoAnn Birrell of Northeast Cobb said she’s concerned about spending taxpayer money involuntarily for such services and favors a voluntary process to fund non-profits.
Ott also has expressed similar sentiments, but his motion to table non-profit action was because he wasn’t at a work session on Monday in which the recommendations were outlined.
“It’s the first time I’m seeing this list,” he said.
Commission chairman Mike Boyce said without the services these agencies provide, the county would likely have to spend more money on incarceration and public health.
“What is the value of this county? Is this for the greater good of the county? My answer is, yes.”
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“Why Non-Profits Are Good for Small Business” is the title of the panel discussion at the ECBA’s monthly luncheon on Tuesday. It takes place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Olde Towne Athletic Club (4950 Olde Towne Parkway).
The speakers are Dawn Reed of Aloha to Aging, Inc., Natalie Rutledge of the Cobb Schools Foundation, Tom Gonter of MUST Ministries and Mary Kay Boler of TAG-Ed Education Collaborative.
The cost for the luncheon is $20 in advance for ECBA members, $25 in advance for guests, and $30 at the door. Online registration can be done here.
A couple of stories related to these groups that we’ve posted recently: Aloha to Aging, the East Cobb-based non-profit that works with seniors and their caregivers, is holding a gala celebration at Kennesaw State in August as a fundraiser as it expands its services.
In January the Cobb Schools Foundation held a Casino Night fundraiser at SunTrust Park to benefit its programs that assist the Cobb County School District.
The Marietta-based MUST Ministries operates a homeless shelter and services for families and individuals in need.
Also next week, the Northeast Cobb Business Association will hold its monthly luncheon. It’s Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Piedmont Church (570 Piedmont Road), and the guest speaker is Dana Johnson, director of the Cobb Community Development Department.
The cost is $15 for members and $25 for members and online registration can be done here.
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