Putting on my mask and rubber gloves, I joined the volunteer warriors unloading the semi truck at 12000 E. 47th Ave. in Denver. Most of us would have been working at this time, but with record unemployment, we were sent home with no word of a return date.
Rather than staring at the wall, Netflix or an aggravated spouse, we saw an opportunity to help others in this crisis. Thanks to Joel and LaKeshia Hodge, the Struggle of Love Foundation began its ‘Sacks of Love’ food distribution service just under two years ago. Now, it’s just the thing that many residents of Denver’s Far Northeast need to stay afloat.
After an extremely busy day of packing sizable food bags and distributing them by the carload, I sat down with LaKeshia Hodge in the offices of Academy 360, a charter school under the DPS umbrella. We discussed how this small, community-run organization arrived at the place where they could serve upwards of 1,000 people a day during an international crisis.
“Do you want the full story, or the abridged version?” LaKeshia asked me, laughing. I reminded her that I could always edit it down for time. She told me the incredible story of their origins.
It began with meeting her husband, Chicago native Joel Hodge, 20 years ago while they were both homeless. They both made a vow to help one another get on their feet.
“We didn’t know what we could do to help each other, but we loved each other and said, ‘We’ll just make it work,’” she said.
LaKeshia says they gained their footing with resources that were there in the community for people in their position. At this point in the interview, I realized that the Hodges are living proof that programs geared to bring people out of poverty do indeed pay dividends down the road.
Soon they were able to buy a house. With that credit, they bought another house and rented it out at a reduced rate for those on Section 8. They literally lifted others as they climbed. In short order, they formed the Struggle of Love Foundation in 2007.
READ: Colorado Sun opinion columnists.
I asked them if they had received any grants to do their work.
“We’ve been operating off of our own money,” LaKeshia said. “We haven’t really received any grant funding, mostly just in-kind donations from people in the community that wanted to support our efforts.”
Soon, they were doing backpack giveaways, Thanksgiving baskets and hot meals for homeless families on Thanksgiving. They also did toy drives for needy families for Christmas, all while not being too far from being one of those families in need.
I was curious to know how they got into distributing food to the community. It turns out that the food bank began with their Father’s Day “Reach for Peace” festival. In 2018, they faced a crisis whereby they lost one of their biggest sponsors. In need of sponsors, they began to tap into food banks around the Denver area to meet their shortfall. They formed a relationship with the Food Bank of the Rockies, and with the excess they received, they started a pantry.
It started out with just extra bread, in extending themselves in this way, they formed a partnership. “It was kind of an accident,” LaKeshia says. “We were in a crisis, and through that challenge, we added another arm of our organization.”
With good work comes the right help. Families Forward Resource Center decided to sponsor their space at Academy 360. Soon they even attracted the eye of the Montbello Organizing Committee who partners with Struggle of Love in their space at Academy 360.
When their food pantry started the “Sacks of Love” program in 2018, they didn’t see the coronavirus on the horizon. Their main clients were senior citizens in Denver’s Far Northeast.
“We struggled keeping our volunteers engaged and our pantry operating.” She said that all changed in mid-March of 2020. LaKeshia says that literally overight, the demand went through the roof, but so did the supply, and so did the volunteers.
“I have to say that we really could not do this without the volunteers. The financial support and in-kind donations are cool, but without the volunteers, we’d just be too overwhelmed. I’ve never seen this much food,” she laughed.
Truthfully, neither had I. One Wednesday of volunteering, I helped unload four separate trucks and stacked boxes in their 500-square-foot pantry. There was almost no walking room. Within two days, it was gone, and new trucks were coming in.
This is the kind of need that the massive unemployment has created in the Denver metro area. But with organizations like Struggle of Love standing in the gap, for now, there’s somebody on the ground meeting the needs of the most needy in our city.
Theo Wilson is a poet, speaker, activist and CNN contributor. Learn more about him at TheoWilson.net.
The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy and submit columns, suggested writers and more to opinion@coloradosun.com.