As many of you know, the First U EDR team provides a hot lunch to those in need at the EDR West location every month. In light of the coronavirus restrictions, we checked in with EDR to see what the status was for our March 20th serving date.
I spoke to Program Manager ReeNee LaFate, who indicated the following:
At present, EDR is still serving lunches, but they are doing so as take-out hot meals, served at the front door. The kitchen and dining room are closed to the public, and only EDR staff and volunteers are inside the building.
They are short-handed and desperately still seeking their volunteer organizations to provide meals as they can. They understand if we are not comfortable coming in, but hoped we could at least prepare the casseroles for them to heat up.
A decision was made to keep our First U volunteers at home, but since we already had our monthly groceries in hand, we made a quick decision to prep the casseroles at home and deliver them to EDR for heating and serving the next day by the EDR staff. In the interest of keeping the virus in hand, we kept our volunteers to the bare minimum. Mimi Moser and I prepped the casseroles, and Kate Cowperthwait and Maureen Fatula delivered them to EDR, along with the many, many packages of cookies you all have been donating at church. We had an overabundance of cookies on hand, and we decided to deliver them all to EDR, since they can certainly use them during these troubled times. (And I have complete faith that we can count on additional cookie donations to come from our First U members in the future. 🙂
ReeNee and the staff at EDR are incredibly appreciative of everyone’s concern for them, and they will get through this. They send their love to
all of us at First U, and of course I reciprocated our love back to them.

Stay safe at home, and be well.
With Love, Cindy Cohen, First U EDR Chair