In 1985, hospice volunteer Ganga Stone delivered a hot meal via bicycle to a man named Richard who was living with HIV/AIDS. Not long after, along with friend Jane Best, Stone founded God's Love We Deliver. The organization delivered meals, often on bike, to Manhattan-based individuals diagnosed with terminal HIV/AIDS. They delivered around 50 meals per week.
Thirty years later, GLWD delivers around 1.5 million meals a year, thanks to 90 staff employees and about 8,000 volunteers. They now provide for anyone with a life altering illness of any kind, catering to 6,200 clients with over 200 distinct diagnoses. This year, they are the official charity partner of the Outsider Art Fair.
"The people who founded this organization just wanted to do something," chief development officer David Ludwigson explained to The Huffington Post. "It was a time of tremendous fear and stigma. People were dying of AIDS and they were alone. For the first year or two, there were meals, but there was also apartment cleaning, pet sitting, giving someone a massage or just sitting with them and having a cup of coffee. We eventually started to focus solely on the food."
"Our tagline used to be 'food for the body and soul,'" added manager of communications Emmett Findley. "It’s a very personal act to have someone cook you a meal and bring it to you. It brings relief and dignity. Today the language we’re using around our work is 'food is medicine and food is love.'"
When describing GLWD, Ludwigson uses the term "nutrition nonprofit" -- not food, not hunger, he specifies. Everything in GLWD's kitchen is made from scratch in their SoHo kitchen, with no preservatives. When a new client is taken on, their first order of business is meeting with a registered dietician to do intake, establishing a meal plan that adapts to his or her medical regimen, ability to ingest, and personal preferences. Some meals are served minced or pureed. "We want to make a sick person better, or at least experience the best quality of life that they can," Ludwigson said.
For this year's Outsider Art Fair, 15 art galleries have donated works for a silent auction, with all proceeds benefitting GLWD. Artists and the arts community, Ludwigson explained, have long been major supporters of GLWD's mission. Not to mention that art has wiggled its way into the GLWD formula.
For example, every holiday season clients receive their meals in a white bag decorated by a New York City student, whether a four-year-old or a high schooler. And then there's the food itself. "Art shows up in the food we deliver," Findley said. "An artist we deliver to said, 'Tell your volunteers these are works of art.' We want to make food that is beautiful."
Ludwigson offered up another connection between the mission of GLWD and that of outsider art. "When you think of the people who started GLWD, I don’t think it’s that different than being an outsider artist. They weren’t trained in providing food service. It was something they were passionate about and wanted, needed to do."
Both Ludwigson and Findley look forward to meeting potential new volunteers and donors at the Outsider Art Fair. But just as much, they hope to spread knowledge of their organization to those who need it most.
"There’s not a waiting list," Findley said. "There never has been, never will be. That message is just as important."
Learn more about God's Love We Deliver at the Outsider Art Fair, from Jan. 21-24, 2016, at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City.
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