When power outages began rippling through the city Sunday evening, the Jubilee Team immediately thought of how they could help their Southeast Dallas neighbors. As an agency that works every day to be a catalyst for resources and opportunity in the Jubilee Park community, they knew that they could not leave their neighbors out in the cold.
By Monday morning, the Jubilee Team had assembled in the Old Church, arms full of canned goods, blankets, and water they had brought from home. In times of crisis, the team is all-hands-on-deck, with everyone from Education to Administrative Support springing into action to ensure that our Jubilee neighbors are taken care of. As the team at the church worked out a game plan, Community Support began making welfare calls: Do you have power? Are you okay? How can we be there for you? The responses were bleak. Power was out across the neighborhood, and families were lacking access to basic items like food and warm clothes. One family reported melting snow as their main water source when they lost water, and another desperately needed blankets.
The team looked around at the church, empty save a few boxes of sanitary items and stray cans of food leftover from distributions past. The plan had always been to turn the empty church into a food pantry one day, but that plan was going to have to be severely expedited. With limited time and limitless need, they knew that they would have to lean on their Jubilee Family. Within hours, everyday heroes stepped up and donations of food and cold-weather resources began rushing in.
With help from the Dallas Police Department, the team loaded their cars full of food, blankets, and meals and drove down the treacherous streets of the Jubilee Park neighborhood carefully in a crawl. By late afternoon, they had made it to each household that had called and asked for help, but when they returned, there were dozens of new messages from families in crisis. Every day the team returned to the church, overwhelmed by the depth of need but fueled by the overwhelming support of our Jubilee Family.
As the team worked steadily into the next week and power began to be restored, it became clear that the Jubilee Park neighborhood was now facing a new crisis: because of the storm, families had gone an entire week unable to work. With one in four families making a household income of just $15,000, a missed week of pay would mean that our neighbors would be unable to put food on their tables. Jubilee was already doing near-daily distributions, passing out almost 100 bags of food at a time, but it just wasn’t enough. Community Outreach Manager Evelyn Amaya was tirelessly working to secure resources for her neighbors when she received some unexpected news from a local digital marketing agency, Social Revolt.
Social Revolt was expecting a truckload of food and supplies amounting to $150,000 from their philanthropy partner Hispanic Star. They wanted to know if Jubilee would be interested in the supplies, and if we would we be able to put together a city-wide distribution event by Thursday. Jubilee had never done a distribution on this scale before, and Thursday was less than 48-hours away. Without missing a beat, Evelyn said “yes.”
The next two days were a blur as the team jumped in to recruit dozens of volunteers, unload pallets of food and water, and pack over 2,000 bags of food and hygiene items. Other vendors like Jarrito’s and Chilango’s Tacos stepped up to help, offering to hand out meals and drinks to our families, and a local high-school DJ even volunteered to provide entertainment to brighten everyone’s spirits. Jubilee created such a stir that Univision advertised the distribution event, and by 3 PM Thursday there was a line of cars as far as the eye could see outside of the community center.
The mood was triumphant as the Jubilee Team worked alongside volunteers to pass out the bags, and when the rain began to fall, everyone smiled; they had already proved they couldn’t be stopped. When the last car drove away, the team collapsed onto the picnic benches, resting for what felt like the first time in days. They were exhausted, soaked to the bone, but exhilarated. They knew that tomorrow promised new challenges, but looking around at the faces of volunteers new and old, they knew that they were not in it alone.