Yesterday was a beautiful day in San Francisco. As I looked down Golden Gate Avenue from the corner at Jones Street, I saw a large crowd, white tents, tables and chairs, and lots of people eating a hearty lunch. And true collaboration in action.
In conjunction with the statewide disaster exercise, Golden Guardian 2013, seven nonprofits practiced their joint plan to prepare and serve hot meals to Tenderloin residents. At 2:00 p.m. when it was all over, members of the Tenderloin Hunger Task Force – St. Anthony Foundation, Glide Foundation, Project Open Hand, Meals on Wheels of SF, SF Food Bank, Salvation Army, and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) – had provided thousands of meals in Disaster Feed SF, and had done so outside on Golden Gate Avenue, without electricity – just like they will likely do in a catastrophic earthquake.
Knowing the critical role that nonprofits play in disaster relief and recovery, The San Francisco Foundation has been supporting the preparedness efforts of nearly 50 key organizations in the Bay Area for the past four years. These agencies have worked hard to develop plans to recover their operations and to provide critical services in the most underserved communities.
Yesterday all of that hard work paid off. In Disaster Feed SF, staff and volunteers from these seven agencies worked side by side to prepare and serve meals, handle crowd control, and manage a public event. The collaboration was visible in the sea of colored T-shirts (each agency donned a different color), the multi-logoed banner, and the various agency trucks parked out front. It was also quite evident from the jointly staffed command post and the way that staff members from different agencies were conferring throughout the event.
In talking with staff from these agencies, it is clear how committed they are to jointly serving the Tenderloin in a disaster.
Their success yesterday was the culmination of many years of building relationships through joint non-disaster projects, several years of disaster planning at each agency, and months of planning together for yesterday’s event.
I certainly wasn’t surprised to see this level of collaboration; I have known that these agencies have been working together for a long time. Yet I was still quite proud to be their supporter and gratified to see how ready they are to serve in the face of a disaster.