Food Podcast: Amen to Action provides about 1 million meals to Pittsburgh food bank amid pandemic

Since 2017, Lee Kricher, Reid Carpenter, Bishop David Zubik and other community leaders have hosted an annual event the day after Thanksgiving that brought thousands of people together literally to pack millions of meals.

This year, covid-19 forced them to change their strategy but not their goal.

Amen to Action, a daylong initiative dedicated to giving back and moving away from commercialism, brought together people of all faiths at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center to create a platform of spiritual capital. The volunteer event, open to everyone, normally includes groups of 15 people assigned to team tables to pack meals. More than one million meals were packed each of the last three years. This year’s in-person event had to be canceled due to the pandemic.

This week on the Food Podcast presented by Clearview Federal Credit Union, Kricher joined host Brian Gulish to discuss the Amen To Action initiative and why it was important to ensure the group continued to support the Food Bank during the pandemic.

This past summer, Carpenter, Kricher — the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation president — and Food Bank president and CEO Lisa Scales met virtually to discuss the inevitable, that the in-person event would need to be canceled. Together, the trio crafted a letter that was sent to event supporters encouraging them to provide support financially to once again provide a million meals in support of the Food Bank.

“The Food Bank is grateful for the wonderful vision of Reid and Lee,” said Gulish. “They were resilient and steadfast in their mission to help feed our neighbors in need, no matter how they had to do it.”

“After meeting in person to pack over one million meals for our neighbors the past three years, our generous donors helped to provide close to one million meals again in 2020 through our partnership with Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank,” said Kricher.

Since August, $170,000 has been raised, which will provide enough food for up to 850,000 meals.

“During this incredibly difficult year we rejoice that we were able to process almost one million meals to those in need,” said Carpenter, co-founder of Amen to Action. “We thank the many people who contributed the resources to make this possible. As importantly, it has united people of faith and good will in love and service and we thank them.”

Amen to Action and it’s parent organization, the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation, are committed to finding a way to provide at least one million meals for our community in 2021 in partnership, once again, with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

For more information on Amen To Action visit https://plf.org/.

Listen: Amen to Action: Almost 1 million meals donated to Pittsburgh food bank during pandemic