Kelly Wourms and Claire Harbutt used to pack 50 lunches on Saturdays in the kitchen of their South Austin home. On Sundays, they’d muster up anyone they could and deliver the lunches by bicycle to people experiencing homelessness.
Their little operation, formed more than two years ago, snowballed. Now Austin Bicycle Meals serves up to 1,000 meals and several other items, including menstrual kits, each month. In the summer, they also hand out popsicles; in the winter, sweaters and socks.
The mission has remained the same: to provide support to people experiencing homelessness, especially those who are tucked into wooded areas and on medians and highways.
Using bikes is essential.
“If you are distributing by car you might have to park illegally and it can just be a bit dangerous," Wourms said. "On bicycles, you're a little more independent, and I think we can get to some of these places that would otherwise be difficult to reach by car or on foot.”
As the group has grown, so has the need for more space, more bikes and more groceries, Wourms said. A recent grant from the City of Austin will help the organization pay for those needs.
Austin Bicycle Meals and its partner Keep Austin Neighborly were one of 50 projects that received $3,000 through the city’s Food and Climate Equity Grants program.
Angela Baucom, the coordinator for the program, said these grants are about providing support directly for grassroots solutions to some of the city's thorniest issues around food justice, climate equity and community resilience.
“We are trying to enable projects that will make a long-term difference in the community,” she said. “So it might be something that goes beyond food access. What we’re looking at is how you can create a sense of food sovereignty in your local area.”
Baucom said of the 50 recipients, nearly half serve people experiencing homelessness.
“I think when most people think about addressing homelessness, they're thinking of basic needs: housing, food and providing those direct services that will help people get into more permanent housing,” she said. “One thing we heard a lot in these applications is community building, and there are many organizations here that are focused on going beyond that food access.”
Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center and Trinity Center both got $3,000 grants to continue feeding people experiencing homelessness. The money will also help cover other services like access to showers and health care, and connecting people with housing programs.
Heartening, another local nonprofit that received a grant, takes in items like clothes and household goods, and repairs them so they are usable. The items are then organized in the group’s sorting room in North Central Austin and sold for cheap.
“It's easy to dump your items at a big chain thrift store, and they often get shipped off to [other countries],” Kelley Rytlewski, Heartening's founder, said. “We take a very different approach that is hyperlocal.”
The organization serves about 200 people a week, many of whom are low-income or experiencing homelessness.
The $3,000 grant will help support the group's operations, including rent. Rytlewski said it will also allow thousands of items to be given away for free.
Baucom said neighborhoods are best suited to find a solution to the needs of that community. She said it's the city's job to listen and empower and facilitate, when possible, and that is what the grants do.
"We really want to be creative about how the City of Austin makes it possible for the community to be apart of governance," Baucom said. "This grant is a small way that we can work within what we are capable of policy wise, but show the community that we trust the solutions that come from within."
