A group of volunteers in Dallas handed out hundreds of meals to people who are homeless and some who are on SNAP benefits Sunday.
Our Giving Kitchen Dallas, a charity that prepares and distributes meals to people in need, cooked 700 meals Sunday morning and early afternoon. Those meals, chili over couscous with coleslaw, were loaded into the vehicles and distributed around the Fair Park area.
Rabbi Mendy Plotkin, one of the organization’s cofounders, said they usually prepare a couple hundred meals each Sunday. This time, Our Giving Kitchen cooked and packed the meals to hand out.
The plan to provide so many meals started when Plotkin and the other cofounders of the kitchen learned SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, would be paused as a result of the federal government’s shutdown.
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to continue paying SNAP benefits but declined to issue a restraining order to force funding after it ran out this weekend.
That’s why Our Giving Kitchen made so many meals.
“The urgency of today was with the SNAP benefits,” Plotkin said. “I come from a very large family, so we know what it means when food is tight and your balance is tight, and SNAP benefits are tight.”
Our Giving Kitchen is a Jewish organization, but volunteers can be of any faith and the meals they cook go to people without concern to religious beliefs and without proselytizing.
Mushka Plotkin, Mendy Plotkin’s wife and a cofounder, said that’s important. The kitchen’s mission is rooted in Jewish values of community, charity and loving their neighbors without limitations based on what they believe.
“We’re not concerned with what you believe,” Mushka Plotkin said. “We’re just worried about making sure people don’t go hungry.”
That means a lot to Donald Henderson.
He receives SNAP benefits that help him feed his five kids and himself. With those benefits on pause, Henderson said he’s trying even harder to stretch what he has left.
Henderson said he works multiple jobs and takes all the overtime he can get to make ends meet. He said he used to make his money dealing drugs and won’t go back to that life.
SNAP benefits have helped him feed his family as he said he finds his footing.
“I got five kids so I'm just holding on to it the most we can,” Henderson said after picking up meals for himself, his children and their mother.
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