Many people need help nowadays, and at its Washington Height brownstone, the Kappa Omicron chapter of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity stands ready to help, not only with comfort and concern, but, most importantly, with food. The fraternity has a long tradition of community service and food distribution. It also works with other community-minded organizations, and this year, they organized the 2014 Five Borough Food Pantry Drive to make sure that families and people, including veterans, get the food they need.
Ray Haskins, co-chair of Kappa Omicron, said, “The [task] of helping people get more food is clear. There are many thousands of children and families living in shelters and hundreds of homeless veterans living on the streets.
“Seniors and fixed-income citizens are more and more pressed by bad economic circumstances. Furthermore, many families are afflicted by unemployment or underemployment. Food assistance will make all the difference in the world in these people’s survival and ability to exist in tough economic times.”
To help their fellow human beings, Kappa Omicron previously gave large quantities of food through food pantries. It organized a five-borough food pantry in 2009 and over a five-year period has been able to donate all kinds of essential foods to needy people, including packages of meat, canned food, cooking oil, fruit and vegetables, etc. Last year, Kappa Omicron provided additional supplies of food to food pantries.
This year, the six pantries sharing in the $5,000 awards are Convent Avenue Baptist Church, Black Veterans for Social Justice, the Salvation Army, Flatbush Tompkins Congregation Church, the St. Albans Congregational Church, Stapleton Union American and Methodist Episcopal Church. Awards were made in all five boroughs.