RECIPE FOR SURVIVAL

Moveable Feast Lexington …Saving Lives One Meal At A Time

It’s often been mistaken for a catering company or one of those fun progressive dinners; but make no doubt about it – the work being done at Moveable Feast Lexington is no picnic. It’s a vital organization that cooks and delivers hot meals to people living with AIDS or HIV-related illnesses and patients of Hospice of the Bluegrass. In fact, with only three full-time staff members, MFL has prepared more than 200,000 meals since its inception almost ten years ago. I recently sat down with Executive Director Terry Mullins and Board President Blake Eames for a closer look at a Lexington group that’s been serving up nutrition and hope for hundreds of people in need for nearly a decade.

Moveable Feast Lexington started in 1998 after a destitute artist with AIDS starved to death just a few blocks from City Hall. The late Michael Thompson, a well-known AIDS activist, and Carol Farmer began taking leftover food from local restaurants to people who needed it. Eventually they enlisted the help of the Episcopal Aids Ministry to raise money and remodeled the St. Augustine Chapel on UK’s campus. This became MFL’s first official kitchen. In 2005, the organization moved to its current home, a larger facility in St. Martha’s Episcopal Church on Lexington’s south side.

MFL is a 501c3 non-profit that gets 40 % of its funding from public and private grants. The other 60 % of its budget comes from private donations and fundraisers. Eames and Mullins agree this is the organization’s biggest challenge. Instead of focusing on one or two big fundraisers a year, MFL tends to devote their resources to smaller, less costly fundraisers throughout the year.  “If you spend $10,000 on a fundraiser, that’s $10,000 you could have used to feed people,” says Mullins.

The group has high hopes for their Belmont Barbecue event, which raised $8,000 in its first outing this year. The fundraiser was held at a local horse farm and had a Belmont Stakes theme. “Everybody had a great time,” says Eames. “If each of them tells a few friends about it, we’re hoping this could become our huge fundraiser every year.”

For Thanksgiving, MFL will be holding its second annual Cause For Pies fundraiser. If you don’t want to deal with baking your own holiday desserts, Moveable Feast will take care of it for you. You can order your pies online or at Lexington’s Farmer’s Market. The proceeds help support MFL’s operations year-round.   

MFL also gets help raising money from two other community groups. The Imperial Court of Kentucky puts on various drag shows and pageant fundraisers to benefit MFL.  Mullins says, “They raise all this money a dollar at a time.”  Another Note, a men’s choral ensemble, donates 100% of the proceeds from all of its concerts to MFL.

Mullins has been with MFL since the beginning.  Eames says, “Terry is Movable Feast.”  He is obviously a man committed to a cause.  “I know a lot of these people. I have so many friends that are living with AIDS and HIV that need the help. I know they need the food,” Mullins says.  “There’s this one person who swears we saved his life. He told me he just couldn’t eat. He didn’t have the money.”

MFL helps provide the balanced nutrition many of these people so desperately need.  Eames recounts the story of one client. “He would answer the door, if he could, huddled over with a blanket wrapped around him. He was gaunt, like a skeleton. We started delivering Ensure to him with his meals. A few months later, I pulled up and he came bouncing out the door and down the steps to get the food. He’s a different man and he swears it’s the nutrition.”

MFL was modeled on a similar program in Atlanta called Project Open Hand.  Mullins says most large metropolitan areas have organizations like MFL, but Lexington is the only city in the region with a program like this. It’s also one of the smallest cities in the country to have one.  “Other programs assign clients a Care Coordinator and give them coupons for groceries.  For some people that’s not enough. They need their meals prepared and delivered. That’s what we do at Moveable Feast that nobody else is doing,” says Mullins.

Eames says the unique service that MFL provides is making a difference. “We don’t want to see people having to choose between getting their meds and getting food,” she says. “They need both. Our clients are sustaining their health and we know a lot of it has to do with the nutrition.”  

If you’d like to make a contribution, volunteer your time, or find out more about Moveable Feast Lexington, go to www.feastlex.org or call (859) 252-2867.

 By Chip Alfred

chip@g3illustrated.com