MEMPHIS, Tenn. — While medical staffs are working the front line of this pandemic, people in the Mid-South have been coming up ways to show them support, including keeping their stomachs full.
Across the country and the Mid-South, we've seen the response from people making supplies like masks, putting up signs outside hospitals, and now pushing Feeding the Frontline initiatives.
Feeding the Frontline is a national movement to deliver meals to hospital employees. In Germantown, a group has now delivered food every night to the Methodist Germantown ER and COVID-19 unit for two weeks.
In Memphis, working professionals and non-profits - Caritas Village, Mid-South Food Bank, and Compost Fairy - are coming together to make an organized plan to bring food to hospitals in the city with Feed the Front Lines, Memphis.
"The last thing we want is for nurses and doctors to have to worry about when they're going to eat, what they're going to eat, how they're going to get their meal, and we just want to fill in that gap," Kelsey Lawrence said.
Lawrence is one of the five organizers of Feed the Front Lines, Memphis.
The group hopes to feed every nurse and doctor they can. To start, they're focusing on feeding one of the hardest shifts, overnights. Baptist East is the first hospital they've partnered with, which they hope later grows to serve more hospitals.
"Our nightside nurses and doctors already have a crappy schedule, so we want them to know that we see them even if we can't physically see them - and that we're sending them hugs and loves through food," Caroline Norris Smart, fellow Feed the Front Lines, Memphis, organizer.
The initiative is mutually beneficial for the healthcare workers and the restaurants, who will be paid for the delivered meals through donations Feed the Front Lines, Memphis, is able to collect. Local restaurants are another sector struggling because of the pandemic.
"We know they're hurting right now and whatever we can do to help, we're going to do it. So that's a big part of this, but at the same time we wanted to do something that would help the medical community because they're literally putting their lives on the line for us," Lawrence said.
Organizers said around 40 businesses have signed on to join the initiative. The Mid-South Food Bank's MealConnect program will deliver the food nightly.
Norris Smith said the starting goal is to feed every staff member every night in the ER and COVID-19 unit at Baptist Memorial which would equate to 150 meals.
"If we can 150 meals for every night shift, that would be amazing and that is then money that we can put back into the economy and keep these small businesses operating," she said.
The program's success will largely depend on the community's support. A $12 donation will provide one meal to a nurse or doctor, but organizers say no donation is too small.