Face-to-Face’s Vaval serves meals to hundreds a day through the COVID crisis

Posted 5/28/20

Altenor Vaval ,the director of operations and food services at Face to Face in Germantown, a non-profit that has been feeding the needy and the homeless for more than 35 years, now leads the …

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Face-to-Face’s Vaval serves meals to hundreds a day through the COVID crisis

Posted
Altenor Vaval ,the director of operations and food services at Face to Face in Germantown, a non-profit that has been feeding the needy and the homeless for more than 35 years, now leads the organization’s efforts to feed people at the center during the COVID-19 pandemic.

by April Lisante

Three days a week, Altenor Vaval leaves his wife and two children to head to 123 Price Street in Germantown, where he dons a mask and stands at the head of a line.

The line sometimes stretches 100, 120 or even 140 people long, and is a human quilt woven of men, women, the elderly, the homeless - people waiting for what may be their only meal for that day, or for a few days.

The lines get longer toward the end of each month, when supplemental money from the government has worn thin in local households.

This routine has become everyday life for Vaval, the director of operations and food services at Face to Face in Germantown, a non-profit that has been feeding the needy and the homeless for more than 35 years. As the head chef who typically prepares hot meals for 500 needy residents a week, he has seen the COVID-19 crisis only intensify the need for basic nourishment in this community.

Since March, he has spent his Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays not in the kitchen but at the head of the outdoor line with a smile and a bag of food to hand to each person. He hopes with each smile, he is brightening a day.

“Food connects people, food is a healing process,” Vaval said. “I love seeing the joy on their faces, so anything I can do, I try to do my best each day.”

“He’s the real hero,” said Face to Face executive director Mary Kay Meeks-Hank. “Chef has been organizing all the teams.”

The Haitian-born Vaval came to Face to Face a little more than six years ago. After attending culinary school in Boston, he came to live with family in New Jersey and stumbled upon a job opening at Face to Face, which was looking for a chef. When he arrived, he estimated about 80 to 90 percent of the food made in the kitchen for the needy was canned. He immediately went to work infusing the cuisine with the fresh produce and ingredients he’d learned to use in Haiti while cooking with his beloved grandmother.

“I said that the best way I can show my heritage was to focus on fresh foods and vegetables,” Vaval said.

“For me, a meal is a way to gather together and share heritage, joy and pain. It’s a way to sit down together and get to know the person you talk with in a precise way,” he said.

That became his mantra at Face to Face, the mantra he lovingly enacted to cook 500 meals a week before the pandemic hit and the kitchen closed at the Price Street center. Now, instead of cooking, he spends his days on the front line, distributing food and coordinating produce deliveries from a Bucks County farm, hot meals from Philadelphia chef Jose Garces, and donated hoagie bags from Wawa. Since the quarantine began in March, the organization has not used volunteers to hand out goods. Vaval and the bare bones staff are responsible for keeping the community healthy and fed.

“I am focused now more on the distribution,” Vaval said. “The challenge has been connecting the dots from the donors to bring the meals to us. It is a lot to coordinate. The hours I work are behind the scenes.”

On Mondays, the Garces restaurant organization delivers hot meals. These hot meals are paired with bags of canned goods that are given to those who line up between 12 and 2 p.m. On Tuesdays, Vaval is at Face to Face to make sure produce deliveries arrive from a local farm. When Thursday rolls around, he is back outside from 12 to 2 p.m., distributing Wawa hoagie bags to the hungry.

But Friday might just be his favorite day. There are plenty more Wawa bags to distribute, but Vaval also presents bags of fresh produce, rice, beans, eggs and potatoes to those in line. The staples may seem simple enough, but to a hungry family, it is much, much more.

“I like to see the smiles on their faces, and the food lets them have a nice weekend,” said Vaval. “I love people. My joy is to work with people from all different cultures. We have become a family.”

coronavirus, food-for-thought