This Life with Gracie
It’s been more than a year now since I met Suellen Daniels, and in all that time, I haven’t been able to forget her.
At the time, I was working on a series of stories about Atlanta's food deserts, low-income communities at least 1 mile from the nearest supermarket, and a source had pointed me to Daniels, who was knee deep in helping provide food to people who occupied these deserts in Atlanta's suburbs, namely Cumming and the rest of Forsyth County.
Even if they could afford to buy food, though few could, they didn’t have the transportation to get to it.
Daniels had decided it was her calling to make that happen. Not only was she collecting food, she and a team of volunteers were preparing and delivering hot meals to the people who needed them.
I met her early one morning at Grace Chapel Church of Christ in Cumming, where the 57-year-old grandmother first saw the need and, well, decided to do something.
Five years earlier, Daniels and her husband, Stephen, had fallen on hard times. They lost their jobs. They lost retirement. Finding a full-time job was nearly impossible.
Desperate, they searched for work and between the two of them signed on for seven part-time jobs. Not even that was enough to make ends meet. Friends and family contributed food, clothing and badly needed cash.
The couple was volunteering at Grace Chapel one day in late October 2010 helping distribute coats, blankets and food to needy families when Daniels got a little irritated. Some 50 people had signed up for the free items. Eighteen of those families did not come to claim their boxes.
Weeks later, she said, county officials arrived to thank the volunteers.
You may be wondering why so many people didn’t come, one of them said. They didn’t because they couldn’t get here.
“It never occurred to me that people struggled with transportation,” Daniels said.
Nor had it occurred to her that nearly 37,000 families with school-aged children went to bed hungry every night in Forsyth County even though it is one of the 10 wealthiest and fastest-growing counties in the United States.
Before that moment, Daniels had searched long and hard for her purpose.
When a county official offered up those stats, Daniels had an epiphany.
“I reflected on what had happened to us,” she said.
Daniels wanted to help, but how could she?
Jerry Dupree, then a county coordinator for volunteer efforts, suggested she reach out to the county’s school social workers.
They gave her the name of a family of three. The next week, they referred three families of 15 people. Daniels began gathering food, making family meals and delivering them. The following week, she had five families and 25 people.
From January to June 2011, she and a group of friends collected food, created hot nutritious meals, boxed everything up and delivered it to needy families with children. By the end of the year, the list had grown to more than 20 families in Forsyth, and they had moved out of her home and into the church building to work.
When I spoke to her in 2014, she was calling the effort Meals by Grace and had recently added a car revitalization program, acquiring old fixer-uppers and repairing them for the road again.
Once families are able to financially handle the added responsibility, they are given a car with a small “payment” on a microloan to help them re-establish their credit, keep their dignity, and learn other valuable skills. The money from the microloan goes back into the repair fund to help get the next car ready for another family.
As of the end of 2015, the organization had grown and was operating as the Bridge, with Meals by Grace being the food support arm of the program. They now serve nearly 140 families each month with each family receiving about 60 pounds of food each week. Along the way, they have received private donations, help from foundations, and a one-time grant of $18,000 from the Atlanta Community Food Bank.
Daniels told me last week that she is developing two other programs to help clients with life skills and work development training.
“Over the years, we’ve learned a lot, like the need for holistic care. Once the specter of hunger is removed from the families we serve, we find other underlying needs that are keeping them stuck,” Daniels said.
In addition to the food delivery program, they offer a “client-choice” pantry called “the Marketplace” two days a week, and a mobile pantry focused on children in Head Start and their families. Every program has been designed to give families a choice and return lost dignity to their lives.
It’s Daniels’ way of building “a bridge from poverty to self-sufficiency” for those in need.
But Daniels and her volunteers need help, too, so they are able to continue the work they’re doing.
“We need more space,” Daniels said.
After moving from Grace Chapel to Midway United Methodist Church last April, they’ve run out of space again.
“We’ve located our ‘forever home’ and want to expand services to needy families in Dawson and Hall counties,” Daniels said.
To do that, she hopes to launch a capital campaign sometime this month but more on that in a later column.
Daniels is still swirling from the need and what she has been able to accomplish through Meals by Grace and the Bridge. She never dreamed that God would use her to bring something so wonderful into existence.
“I am only one, but I am still one,” she said, quoting Helen Keller. “I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
“Look at how much more we have done by working together as a community. It’s awesome.”
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