Soup Kitchen, IRIS, Neighbors Team Up

A food pantry run by a budget-slammed agency for refugees gained a new owner Tuesday — and a new mission as a neighborhood soup kitchen.

Meanwhile, dozens of East Rockers responded to a call for new volunteers to help the refugee agency continue its work amid vanishing federal aid.

Those were the latest community efforts to help Integrated Refugee and Immigration Services (IRIS) continue its work helping newcomers become neighbors in New Haven.

The Trump administration has canceled about half of $12 million in federal funding planned for IRIS this year. IRIS has had to lay off about half its staff to about 45 employees. This month it’s shutting down the Nicoll Street headquarters it has called home in the East Rock neighborhood

In response, East Rock/Fair Haven Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith and the East Rock Community Management Team organized a ​“30 volunteers in three days” campaign seeking to encourage neighbors to sign up as volunteers to help IRIS keep serving 200-some families seeking jobs, health care, and homes in town.

Rather than three days, it took just three hours for 30 volunteers to sign up Tuesday. By 1 p.m. the number had hit 62. (Update: By mid-Wednesday it had hit 183.) They will undergo IRIS volunteer training then get to work driving people to medical appointments or job interviews, help them find jobs, and navigate the state HUSKY process. (Email Smith at ward9@newhavenct.gov to sign up or learn more.)

The outpouring of support reflects a ​“hunger” by neighbors to take action face to face with other neighbors rather than despair at home over national events, Smith observed during an appearance Tuesday with IRIS Operations Manager Ana Cardenas and CSK Executive Director Winston Sutherland and CSK board chair Greg DePetris on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. 

“New Haven can be a leader in tackling some of the issues around loneliness and isolation” in the process, Smith argued.

Meanwhile, IRIS no longer has the money to operate its food pantry inside a 5,000 square-foot 75 Hamilton St. warehouse. The pantry was distributing weekly food bags to over 650 families including 80 IRIS clients.

Enter the Community Soup Kitchen (CSK). Tuesday it announced it had taken over the operation. It will foot the $4,000 rent and utilities bill and work with IRIS to continue the weekly food distribution. It will also initiate a three-day-a-week soup kitchen there.

Ana Cardenas came up with the idea of having the two organizations work together to save and expand the food operation.

“This can’t happen,” Cardenas recalled thinking about the pending closure. 

Cardenas works as IRIS’s operations manager. She also recently joined the Soup Kitchen’s board. Board members liked the idea.

She and the other ​“Dateline” guests portrayed the partnership as an example of how New Haven nonprofits are working together at a time federal funding is disappearing for helping immigrants and the poor.

For instance, the Trump administration canceled an $800,000 contract for Connecticut Foodshare, the state’s primary food bank.

CSK, which is largely run by volunteers, is meanwhile holding strong with its own $600,000 budget.

“We can help” IRIS ​“because we’re not federally funded,” Sutherland noted — making a statement that has morphed from a sign of budgetary weakness to a sign of budgetary strength in the new nonprofit landscape.

The Hamilton Street expansion is part of a ​“Closing the Gap” initiative CSK has undertaken to provide meals in neighborhoods where between a quarter to half the families are ​“food insecure,” meaning at some point each month they choose between having a meal or paying the rent. CSK has run its main soup kitchen on Broadway for 47 years. The Hamilton Street satellite is the fourth out of what CSK hopes will be 11 citywide. Click here to learn more about CSK volunteer and donation opportunities.

And click on the video below to watch Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith, IRIS’s Ana Cardena, and CSK’s Winston Sutherland and Greg DePetris discuss anti-hunger and refugee support work on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of ​“Dateline New Haven.”