Community Corner highlights the work of Seattle Human Services’ community partners in their own words. Our goal is to gather stories and photos that illustrate their amazing work on behalf of the people of Seattle. This post was written by Beverly Graham, Founding Executive Director of OSL Serves.
What is the role your organization fulfills in your community?
OSL Serves (formerly known as OPERATION: Sack Lunch) is a 35-year non-profit in Seattle, providing no-cost, nutrient-dense, culturally relevant meals, to shelters, tiny house villages, permanent supportive housing units, Open Meal Service sites, homeless veterans, children’s summer meals, asylum seeker meals, elder meals, and other organizations needing nutritional support. We currently prepare, deliver, and serve 6000 to 7000 meals each day; and more than 2 million meals annually.
Our Food in Motion Food Recovery program (FIM) recovers and redistributes approximately 2 million pounds of viable food annually, which we share and deliver to more than 36 meal provider agencies throughout the greater Seattle area.
We use our walk-in freezers, refrigerators, and warehouse, as over-flow storage for meal programs and food banks throughout the emergency food system in Seattle, so they do not have to turn away donations of much-needed products, and we provide parking in our fenced parking lot to our Seattle Food Committee Food Bank partners for their delivery truck.
Our Meals Partnership Coalition (MPC) program represents and supports all the member agencies throughout the emergency meal system in the greater Seattle area, providing delivery transportation, storage, funding, and space in our kitchen for special projects. We have 17 vehicles in our fleet, 6 of which are refrigerated. Our kitchen is equipped to provide 10,000 to 15,000 meals daily.
How does your partnership with Seattle Human Services (HSD) assist you in that role?
Wow! How much room do we have? Our partnership with the Seattle Human Services Department began in 1998. It has been the singular most important partnership we have had. The outstanding individuals we have worked with have allowed us to grow, have encouraged us to lead, and forgave us when we erred. We were neophytes when we delivered those first 30 lunches. It has been a long, and not always easy, education. HSD held our hands, honored our work, and allowed us to feel appreciated, worthy, and competent. We have valued our relationship, and the support that has been so generously offered to us, not only organizationally, but also personally, and because of the relationships we have developed, we have never said no when asked to jump. We have simply asked, “how high”.
What is your organization’s origin story?
OSL began with the delivery of 30 organic sack lunches to the Occidental Park/Pioneer Square area in September 1989. It was a one-day project, for one person, that turned into 35 years of accidently providing many millions of meals. 30 sack lunches turned into the 7000 culturally relevant, nutrient-dense, beautiful meals we prepare, deliver, and serve each day.
We are the largest meal provider in the State of Washington. However, we work under the radar, without fanfare, and we have been instrumental in moving the needle towards equity, by educating the meal provider community and our many partners on the importance of naturally grown, safe, and local ingredients when available.
We offer choices such as plant-based, gluten-free, and diabetic-friendly meals, as well as options for guests with dental issues, or in renal failure, and much more. We created the Eat Real Food Campaign in 2006 and have continued to remind the meal community and our political partners that if your grandmother does not recognize an ingredient as food that should be consumed, then it probably is not.
How has your organization grown or developed in recent years?
In January 2020, OSL was preparing, delivering, and serving 3200 meals each day with 36 staff members. When COVID hit in February, our HSD partners asked if we could produce more meals. By April, just two short months later, we were producing 9000 meals a day. Some of the environments we delivered to were COVID hot shelters. As first responders, we were the liaison between our HSD partners and the meal providers that remained open. We stored and delivered PPE to all meal programs, and we hired chefs, prep cooks, scullery, warehouse, and drivers who had lost their employment due to COVID. The OSL staff increased to 75 staff members—all direct service, except for three administrative staff—and many of us worked 60 to 80-hour weeks.
We lost staff to COVID, and those years left a mental and physical mark on our organizational spirit. However, it also solidified our commitment to serving meals that contribute to health and well-being, physical, emotional, and mental. It also became the impetus for us to push the entire system, not just our own organization, to redefine the definition of culturally relevant meals to include medical issues, lifestyle choices, food allergies and sensitivities, dental issues, ethnic foods, elderly needs, children’s needs, food that brings comfort, and the list goes on. OSL was catapulted from being a smaller organization, moving slowly forward, to being the largest meal provider in the State of Washington. It has been a wild ride.
For many years we operated out of 7 smaller kitchens with 100-year-old failing and falling apart equipment. In May of this year, we opened our own state-of-the-art 13,000-square-foot kitchen/warehouse/office space. We built cold/frozen/and dry storage into our new facility for the meal provider system. Our kitchen is 5500 square feet, the warehouse is 6000 square feet, and the office is 1500 square feet. The entire facility has been built as environmentally friendly as possible. We rebranded our organization this year from OPERATION: Sack Lunch to OSL Serves.
Why is it important for HSD and City of Seattle taxpayers to invest in community-led work?
It is imperative that we create partnerships that include and invite the City, for-profit, non-profit, as well as community members, drawing on the collective genius, and lived experience. The more ideas that are presented at the table, the more we can see not only how we want to navigate through the complicated issues, but also how we don’t want to behave. The more diversity, experience, and expertise invited to the table allows us to listen and learn from different areas of knowledge and life skills. It is a hope and a goal that these kinds of partnerships will lead to an understanding of the necessity of investing in organizations that work for the greater good of the community.
How do your programs and services help to reduce the disparities experienced by people of color living in our region?
OSL is deeply committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Our staff is incredibly diverse, and come from all walks of living. We are a small microcosm of misfits that have created a safe harbor, valuing open-mindedness, and the team concept. We understand that poverty, hunger, lack of access to education, and incarceration, disproportionately affect people of color, and OSL intentionally hires from the communities we serve. As a second-chance employer, we operate with an ethic that embraces and values the experiences of the collective. There is wisdom to be learned, forgiveness to ask for and to offer, and a richness of embracing all the differences that define and create a culture.
Tell us an example of how an HSD-funded program or service impacted the life of one of your community members.
We met Elmer in 2006. He was living in a shelter, was divorced, and was struggling with Substance Use Disorder. We hired him to do security at the Outdoor Meal Site (OMS) under the freeway at 6th and Columbia. The OMS site was supported by HSD. OSL was contracted to manage the OMS and to schedule all the various Outdoor Meal providers, and mealtimes at the site as well as provide daily meals and fill in if another provider canceled.
Elmer garnered the respect of all the meal providers and the people being served. He has humility and strength, and a wicked sense of humor. He became a role model for so many people living unsheltered and struggling with hunger. Throughout his tenure with OSL, Elmer successfully worked on his sobriety, remarried his wife, purchased a home, and helped to support his grandchildren. Elmer was promoted from the OMS to being a driver and trainer for our Food In Motion food recovery and redistribution program, also supported by HSD. He has had 18 years of Sobriety.
What motivates your staff or keeps you going?
Our tagline is OSL Serves: Compassion on a plate. This is what we do daily… we serve radical compassion… not only for people who are struggling with hunger, shelter, discrimination, and health difficulties but also as a second chance employer. For many OSL staff members, who have had struggles with shelter, the justice system, substance use disorder, and employment, their lives have been changed, and maybe even saved, by our belief in them and support of them. The OSL staff continues to be motivated by shared lived experience, the service they provide, and the knowledge that they are making a difference in the lives of others. The meals we create, deliver, and serve are the by-product of our true mission, which is—each and every day—to be Only Serving Love.