Karen Ponzio photo
Olmo-Rivera, Zumwalt-Hathaway, and Werlin.
What happens when a Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen volunteer and New Haven arts and culture scene superfan decides to combine the two things near and dear to his heart? The New Haven Cares Festival of Arts and Music is born.
The brain child of Andrew Zumwalt-Hathaway, this newly created fundraising event will transform some of the city’s hottest night spots into places where donations can be collected for the annual DESK Thanksgiving For All program, offering both good will and a good time.
The idea came to Zumwalt-Hathaway while sitting at one of the Unplugged series of shows he books at Three Sheets under the moniker Booger Z. Jones.
“I thought, ‘well, it would be nice to do a show that’s just for DESK,’” he said. “And then, being the overachiever I tend to be sometimes, I thought, ‘why not make it a whole festival?’”
He reached out to Luis Olmo-Rivera, DESK’s development director, and ran the idea by him.
“I got the thumbs up pretty quick,” he said with a smile.
DESK decided to hold the festival toward the end of October so it would lead right into its Thanksgiving for All program and serve as a way to gather non-perishable food items and monetary donations. The events will begin on Tuesday, Oct. 22 at Ordinary and continue Thursday, Oct. 24 at Three Sheets; Friday, Oct. 25 at Firehouse 12; Saturday, Oct. 26 at Christopher Martin’s; and conclude Sunday, Oct. 27 at Cafe Nine, next door to the DESK drop-in and resource center that is currently being renovated.
DESK’s Thanksgiving for All program has been around for almost 30 years in conjunction with other organizations, according to executive director Steve Werlin. Their two closest partners are Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers and Yale Hospitality; then, about a dozen other partners are involved in various ways, with donations, running drives, and hosting spots to make meals. The goal of the program is to serve about 1,300 individuals on Thanksgiving Day through meal deliveries.
DESK itself has been around almost 40 years, and for 25 years the organization had operated exclusively out of Center Church’s parish house on Temple Street. In late 2020 it purchased its State Street location to serve as its new drop in and resource center.
DESK began serving out of that space those years between 2021 and when renovations began in February 2024. During renovations, the organization has been operating out of The Church of St. Paul and St. James on the corner of Chapel and Olive Streets. Operations will be moved back into the State Street location when renovations finish in November.
The facility will have the same services as before and more. Though DESK’s focus is on those who are unhoused and primarily unsheltered, anyone can go there and access some basic needs, whether that’s food, clothing, or toiletries. DESK also has a goal of trying to get those in need connected to other resources so they can get housed, employed, and into substance abuse treatment programs and medical programs or get medical care.
“The idea is that it is both basic needs as well as next-level needs,” said Werlin.
Once the renovations are complete, DESK will have a café on the first floor and a full commercial kitchen on the second floor (they serve over 100,000 meals a year, per Werlin). They will also have a third floor that includes a meeting room where they will work with United Way and the CT Mental Health Center for those in need of services, as well as an area that will serve as the headquarters for the Homeless Health Care Department of the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center.
“It’s an incredible resource,” said Zumwalt-Hathaway.
Both Werlin and Olmo-Rivera praised Zumwalt-Hathaway, who has been one of DESK’s longest serving drop-in center volunteers. He will be celebrating his three-year anniversary there this November.
“He’s here every week serving people food and making sure people are taken care of,” said Werlin.
Bringing The Humanity Back
Zumwalt-Hathaway, who lives in New Haven, volunteered for years in a variety of locations throughout the state, including running a food truck for the Bridgeport rescue mission pre-pandemic for two years and then delivering groceries for FISH (Food in Service of the Homebound) in New Haven. When they stopped doing their weekend scheduled deliveries — “and my weekends are the only time I have free to volunteer” — he looked up DESK as an alternative, since he was familiar with it from doing Thanksgiving deliveries.
“What appealed to me was the same thing that appealed to me about the food truck work: just direct person-to-person hands-on work with people in need,” he said.
Another one of Zumwalt-Hathaway’s projects is managing the Goatville Community Garden. He brings all the produce from there to the DESK food pantry at the Church of St. Paul and St. James every Wednesday.
According to Werlin, the one on Wednesday before Thanksgiving is “our biggest super pantry of the year.”
Everyone gets all the Thanksgiving fixings and a turkey, according to Olmo-Rivera, “all the ingredients you need to have a full Thanksgiving, a full traditional meal with your family at home.”
With that in mind, at the festival next week DESK is asking for the following nonperishable donations: reuseable shopping bags, broth (turkey, chicken, or vegetable), boxed stuffing,w canned yams, corn, green beans, and cranberry sauce (this list is also available on the DESK website). Monetary donations will also be accepted at the events, which are all free to the public except the shows at Firehouse 12 and Cafe Nine.
Ordinary will be creating a special cocktail for its evening, with a portion of the proceeds going to DESK. There will be art for sale and raffles at the Three Sheets event, the proceeds of which will also be donated.
Zumwalt-Hathaway will be at all of the events along with a team of DESK staff and volunteers to collect donations and answer questions about their mission and volunteering. The organization has around 2,000 volunteers throughout the year.
“The kind of work that Andy does is exactly what we’re looking for, people to get engaged in a variety of ways — whether they are coming once a week or dropping off food from their community garden or organizing fundraisers,” said Werlin. “We’re looking for people who are trying to plug themselves in, in ways that are interesting to them and fulfilling for them.”
“This is why we call him our superstar volunteer,” Werlin added with a laugh. “This is the model of exactly what we want people to do.”
“I’ve always been very service oriented,” said Zumwalt-Hathaway. “You grow up as a preacher’s kid, you know, you’re just always doing service projects.”
“My hope is that it [the festival] being for DESK will bring in people who want to support DESK and introduce them to some of the local scene — and vice versa, introducing those people who go out locally to what’s going on at DESK,” he added.
“We definitely want to emphasize local talent coming together for the community that they live and play in,” said Olmo-Rivera. “Support residents, your neighbors, people you bump into at the grocery store.” He also noted that some people come to DESK for help with “just two or three meals a month” or “to fill in a gap.”
“Food insecurity is affecting a lot more than your stereotypical demographics,” he said.
“We always say that when you’re looking to make sure that you can meet all of your expenses, food is the easiest assistance you can get because we don’t ask questions,” added Werlin. “Anybody can walk into a pantry. Anybody can walk into a soup kitchen program or a meal program and get food. It’s the one thing that you don’t need to fill out a ton of forms, or show ID, or make the case for your need. It’s something that is easily accessible. I think sometimes people forget that these are human beings. We want to bring some humanity to this issue.”
Please see the DESK website for more information about The New Haven Cares Festival of Arts and Music including more details about the events and donations.