UMB partners with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Maryland Food Bank to make weekly deliveries to West Baltimore neighbors.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) is working with the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) to provide weekly food deliveries to community members in West Baltimore. Each week, UMMC arranges for UMB and their other institutional partners to receive a Maryland Food Bank delivery of boxes with essential items to distribute to neighbors in the community.
On March 6, UMB’s Community Engagement Center (CEC) received 315 boxes of food boxes full of nonperishable food that each fed a family of four. CEC staff, partners, and volunteers were all involved in the process of distributing the boxes to ensure that they reached community members across all seven West Baltimore neighborhoods.
Community school coordinators from UMB’s nine partner schools picked up 135 of those boxes, which were dispersed to families in their school communities. The CEC staff personally delivered another 130 boxes to neighboring apartment complexes. And Ms. Vernell Lewis, an active community neighbor and CEC partner, picked up 45 boxes to distribute to her neighbors in West Baltimore. CEC faculty and staff were able to distribute any additional food boxes to neighbors passing by.
This wonderful effort would not be possible without the CEC’s partners at UMMC as well as their community school coordinators, neighbors, and partners at the surrounding apartment complexes. In total, 1,260 people received food support from this initiative.