Carrie Coelho (left) and Wendy McCubbin prepare food.
Back in 1974, Steve Schiavone’s mom, Rita, was a volunteer social worker at the Frankford Y when she started helping 11 homebound people with meals.
Over the next 40 years, Rita Ungaro-Schiavone’s work grew into a massive organization that quietly brings free meals to thousands of homebound and isolated people in five counties, making sure they have nourishment for their bodies, and, just as important or more, solace for their souls.
Aid For Friends “visitors,” said Schiavone, the organization’s executive director, bring their humanity as well as food. They don’t just deliver. As their volunteers’ titles show, they visit.
“You get to know people,” said volunteer Ed Murray, who has visited homebound clients for 14 years. “They tell you everything.”
Schiavone recalled going with his mom to visit Dorothy during the ’70s when he was 11 years old.
“It was so cold in her house in Frankford that you could see your breath,” he said. The elderly woman told her mother she was thinking about committing suicide. “She told mom she was tired of being hungry and alone.”
Aid For Friends changed that. When Dorothy did pass away, Schiavone said, she wasn’t hungry and she wasn’t alone.
That’s the kind of work the nonprofit has been doing for four decades.
Aid For Friends, 12271 Townsend Road, will be celebrating its 40th year at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4, at Holy Ghost Preparatory School Field House, 2429 Bristol Pike, Bensalem. There will be several honored guests from Philadelphia churches as well as presentations of Rita Ungaro-Schiavone awards to Christ the King R.C. Church, Betty McLaughlin, Lynn Trombetta, Mike Cavanaugh from Willits Road Pharmacy, the Rev. David Carey from Good Shepherd United Methodist Church and Daniel Grace from Teamsters Local 830.
Some of the people who get their meals from AFF are so poor, Schiavone said, that they don’t have refrigerators or stoves. The organization gets them microwaves and used fridges, he said. Aid For Friends also makes sure they get holiday and birthday presents.
“Nobody gets them presents,” he said. “We get them things that are useful to them.”
Churches are very involved with AFF, Schiavone said. “We work primarily with churches,” he said. They supply the volunteers who not only deliver food to the isolated and homebound, they make the meals, too. Although the organization has massive refrigerators, lots of storage space and a huge kitchen in its 30,000-square-foot Townsend Road digs, church members from all over the Delaware Valley make thousands of meals, which are stored in more than 200 churches, Schiavone said.
It is those volunteer cooks and visitors from area churches who make Aid For Friends one of the largest organizations you might not have ever known about. There’s not a lot of fanfare. Just a thousand or so behind-the-scenes people making life more bearable for thousands of people in Greater Philadelphia.
“If it were not for people going to churches,” Schiavone said, “this would not be possible. … My mother recruited volunteers from area churches for 30 years.” She attracted at least 20,000 people, he said.
Rita now is homebound herself, Schiavone said, but he continues the AFF tradition of appealing to church-goers’ help. In one weekend at a Lansdale parish, he recruited 168 volunteers.
They give their time, and some use food they themselves supply to make meals, Schiavone said. Also, many companies supply food and workers to prepare meals in AFF’s big kitchen. That work is done in shifts, Schiavone said, with prep done by one group and cooking and packaging by another.
Many volunteers continue their work well into their retirement years. Ed Murray, for example, is in his 70s, Schiavone said. Recently, two sisters who were longtime volunteers finally retired. They were in their 80s, he said.
Those who are visited by AFF volunteers are homebound and isolated, Schiavone said. There are 20,000 such people in the Delaware Valley, he estimated. Those served by AFF are referred to the organization through a variety of sources, he added.
There’s no time limit on how long AFF will visit, he said.
“We’ll serve people as long as they need us.” ••
40 years of Service
Aid For Friends, 12271 Townsend Road, Philadelphia, PA 19154.
Volunteer visitors take meals and companionship to homebound and isolated people in five Greater Philadelphia counties. Interested in volunteering? Call Lynn Trombetta at 215–464–2224. Churches that want to get involved should call AFF’s executive director, Steve Schiavone, at 215–464–2224.
All of the organization’s meals are made with donated food. Frozen beef, chicken and turkey are in high demand.
Website: www.aidforfriends.org
Volunteer Ed Murray, shown in the Aid For Friends kitchen, says you get to know people as a volunteer and they confide in you.
Dolores Niver (left) and Karen McGinn stop for an embrace. MARIA POUCHNIKOVA / TIMES PHOTOS
