I moved a lot as a boy, but I’m a south Baltimore guy. I’ve lived in Brooklyn, which is the city, I’ve lived in Brooklyn Park, which is Anne Arundel county, I’ve lived in Lansdowne in Baltimore County – I moved a lot. But when I reflect back over my childhood, my one stability is a church about a block away from us.
I now wear two hats – I’m executive director of City of Refuge, which is a non-profit organization, and I call it my full-time job – and I’m a pastor of this church that my grandmothers raised me in and it’s my part time “gig”. My parents battled substance abuse problems – as a matter of fact they both died due to complications from opioid addiction. I always say God never wastes a hurt. Rather than take that hurt of being a child of chemically addicted parents, I decided to turn that around and it became my benevolent heart for people in crisis because I grew and survived in crisis. We were evicted on a regular basis. My parents were on and off again the methadone program when I was a young man, and I struggled. I tried to turn that struggle around and as an adult I tried to motivate others.
I graduated in ‘91 Lansdowne high school, went to college in Tennessee. I found my way back to Brooklyn in 1999. In 2002 I was hired full-time by the church. Prior to that, in 2000, a friend of mine and I started a food pantry here just trying to meet needs. Back in the day we would go to the Maryland Food Bank and buy food in unsorted bulk, cause it was the cheapest way to get the food at 14 cents a pound, we’d say “Give me 200, 300, 400 pounds of food.” We’d bring it back here and sort it and give it away. As a kid growing up hungry, I realized it is a shame that anyone in America is hungry. We shouldn’t have food insecurity in America.
For me, I never want to see a kid go hungry. I don’t think you can help somebody with what’s next in their life if they’re hungry. I once heard about somebody who was a recovering addict sitting across the table from a social worker, and she’s looking at that old poster of a picture of a fried egg in a pan saying “This is your brain on drugs.” This social worker is telling her everything she needs to do to turn her life around. And she said that the whole time she’s sitting there and just thinking “I’m hungry.” She didn’t hear anything else, she just saw that picture of that fried egg and thought “I’m hungry.” The way City of Refuge tries to lead is to meet you at your point of need. It’s following the hierarchy of needs – you’ve got to address your most basic needs for food, shelter, and water first, then you can dig deeper into what’s next.
Prior to COVID-19, so many of our residents already relied on us for food access, so we felt compelled to stay open. So we hunkered down and did it ourselves. It worked out; we were able to get it done and just started serving meals. As the need arose, we saw there were supply and demand issues with the food pantry and prepared meals. You just tried to keep up with the ebbs and flows.
Looking back now, it’s hard to believe we’ve served over 100,000 prepared meals. Since the 1st of the year we’ve served a little over one million pounds of food, that’s not counting toiletries and non-food items – everything from toilet paper to PPE.
At the peak we were serving almost 1,000 meals a day in May to early June. That demand has gone down quite a bit, today we served 500 meals, that’s a typical day. It’s all pretty much worked out. There were a few days when I thought: “I don’t know where the food is going to come from.” But if you walked in our building today, you would be blown away at the amount of food I have in the building at the moment.
Billy Humphrey is the Executive Director of City of Refuge and the Pastor of Pathway Church of God.
Special thanks to Bryan Thompson for conducting this interview.
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