For longtime volunteer Stacey Brahmey, Food & Friends is like a second family. She’s spent 30 years volunteering on Saturdays, a fact of which she is really proud.
“Besides my family, it’s my biggest legacy. I hope to keep volunteering as long as I’m here and I’m able to do it,” Brahmey said.
Stacey, now retired as a stay-at-home mom, started volunteering in 1995 after learning about volunteer opportunities at a local fair. At the time, Food & Friends solely served clients with HIV/AIDs.
“I was really glad to be in there, trying to make things better because so often it just wasn’t handled the way everyone would’ve wanted it to be,” she said of the treatment of HIV/AIDs patients at the time.
Now, Food & Friends serves a dozen medical conditions and life with HIV/AIDs has come a long way, and she’s still here. She’s volunteered at our rented space in Navy Yard and at our building in Fort Totten; she’s weathered a pandemic and learned a lot of culinary skills from all our chefs; she volunteered from before she had kids and now her children are 26 and 28, and they’ve also volunteered with us, along with her husband and her parents.
“I’m really glad I can make the day easier for someone struggling with a life-impacting illness,” Stacey, 59, said. “I’m glad I can do a tiny part to show people there’s lots of people who care.”
If you’d like to get involved and volunteer with Food & Friends, visit here to learn more and sign up for your first shift!