An East End institution, Organizacion Latino Americana, is digging deep for the needs of children and families currently in crisis, with the help of volunteers and donors.
Michael Donovan, an East End resident and well-known computer engineer, has donated 2,000 Chromebook laptops to OLA and is also providing support for students who do not have internet access. OLA is distributing the computers and access to Wi-Fi in Springs, Riverhead, Hampton Bays, and Greenport so children can continue their schooling remotely.
“While I am not Latino by birth, I was raised in Costa Rica and Lima, Peru, and feel a deep kinship with Latinos,” Mr. Donovan said this week by email. “I believe in and support OLA’s mission wholeheartedly, as it speaks to the needs of the East End’s most vulnerable, who are often, but not always, Latino.”
OLA has also linked up a network of dedicated volunteers, each of whom has adopted a number of households in need. There are 35 volunteers so far, assisting about 120 housebound families from different racial backgrounds and situations, as far west as Wyandanch, Bay Shore, and Lindenhurst. The volunteers learn the families’ food requirements and do their weekly grocery shopping for them.
“We’re doing this in a way that makes sense to me for a lot of reasons,” Minerva Perez, executive director of OLA, said in an interview. “We are not trying to do what Long Island Cares or Island Harvest do, or do what a food pantry does. With one volunteer per family, we are sourcing food. Sometimes that is buying it; sometimes it means connecting a family with a food pantry if that is viable. These are families that are all in crisis. None of them . . . have any other options.”
Ms. Perez said late Monday that 14 more people had been added to the list that day alone. In many cases there are donors supporting the grocery purchases; in a few cases, OLA itself is footing the bill.
“The goal is surviving week to week,” Ms. Perez said, “but the second part of this that is very important is my desire to not become a delivery service for the worst and the biggest crisis on the East End. They’re doing a good job keeping the food coming, but it’s also about how we distribute it to homebound families and how we redefine ‘homebound’ in this new age.”
To that end, she is also calling upon local government officials to work together and come up with a regional plan in case the Covid-19 situation worsens and the volunteers have to pull back.
“We would like to see a coordinated effort [to] have a plan that you’re ready to go on in case this continues on for the next couple of weeks,” Ms. Perez said. “That’s not easy to roll out . . . That’s what I’m urging right now — that we have a plan, that we all know what it is, and that we’ll be ready to activate it shortly, because [the need] is only growing.”