One Sandwich Makes A Difference
Joy D’Ovidio delivers an AMWD meal to an unhoused neighbor.
Photo credit: A Meal With Dignity
Organic lettuce, thinly sliced tomato, half of an avocado, a slice of Mozzarella, Swiss or Monterey Jack cheese on a soft bun spread with extra virgin olive oil and the Holy Trinity of herbs - parsley, mint and chives. Where some might see a tasty sandwich, A Meal With Dignity and its co-founders, Joy and Gene D’Ovidio, see food that nourishes their unhoused neighbors and gives love to those delivering it and those receiving it.
AMWD is based in San Francisco, and its vision is “no one hungry and homeless.” Its mission is to encourage individuals, schools, businesses and groups to make their signature meal kits and then deliver them directly to their shelterless neighbors. Joy says they are called to do this work and have no plans to stop. This year AMWD hit their goal of serving 10,000+ organic and sustainable lunches to unhoused people, with 80% of those meals going to people in San Francisco and the remaining 20% going to people in cities around the world. Reaching this goal gives Joy, Gene and the AMWD board of directors credibility and hope of influencing policies and laws that affect their homeless neighbors in shelters and on the streets in San Francisco.
“Indeed, the most fundamental characteristic of life is its search for nourishment... the demand for food, for survival” (Disciplines of the Spirit, pg. 14, Howard Thurman). The gift of a freshly made meal gives vitality and allows the recipient to survive.
AMWD Core Value
If there is such a thing as culinary royalty, Joy descends from it. Her parents, Albert Gallatin (Gal) Powers and Jehanne Havens-Monteagle, were the owners of Gallatin’s on the Monterey Peninsula. A profile of it in Carmel Magazine, describes it as “THE place for fine dining on the Peninsula and a destination for gourmets from around the country from 1950 into the 1970s.”
Both of Joy’s parents came from distinguished and wealthy families, and she grew up with a lot of wealth and privilege. But Joy and her siblings were taught the importance of hard work and were expected to help care for their five acre estate (Joy cleaned the chicken coop.) Her parents were farm to table before it was a thing and that is where Joy first learned that food is medicine. Her parents built a reputation for helping people who were down on their luck or trying to overcome addiction. They also took good care of their employees making sure they earned a living wage working for them. They drilled into their children that because they had so much, much was expected of them.
By the time Joy was 21 years old, she knew as much about wine as any sommelier and a lot about food and fine dining. But jobs in fine dining were hard to come by for women, so she started her career in retail. It was a time, though, when wine companies were hiring women to sell their wines because they thought they were better at it than men, so a friend hired her to be a sales representative for his wine company. Joy put her knowledge of wine and fine dining to use and developed a successful career making good money. She earned so much, she was able to help support her twin sister who was an artist.
It was during this time that she met her friends and future business partners, Lionel Robbe-Jedeau and Gilles Wicker. She would cook for them as they shared the problems they were having with their girlfriends. She joined forces with them when they wanted to introduce croissants and an everyday french baguette to the San Francisco market dominated by sourdough bread. The three went on to launch Bakers of Paris, which permanently closed in 2020 after 39 years of selling bread. Joy was responsible for building their successful wholesale division. Eventually, she sold her equity in the company. After she left, her former partners hired her as a consultant, which is how she built a successful consulting practice with specialty food companies. In 2009, while consulting with them, Joy and Gene, a business strategist, created the Farmers Market division at Bakers of Paris, which got their breads into farmers markets across the Bay area.
Joy’s mother-in-law had nine children and taught Gene that women were just as good as men. She also was a devout Catholic, and as Joy explains, “kept holding up the cross to her.” Joy converted to Catholicism and was inspired by the work of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement she founded and Liberation Theology. Joy sees Jesus as a revolutionary who was homeless and always looking for a meal.
The best of the best to those with the least. People experiencing homelessness don’t just need feeding. They should have the dignity of a good meal.
AMWD Core Value
After working hard for so many years, Joy took a sabbatical. She volunteered with the Winter Shelter Project run by the San Francisco Interfaith Council, whose members include churches and synagogues that come together to provide meals and shelter to unhoused people. She remembers volunteering to serve a meal to homeless men at a Catholic church. She brought mini baguettes to contribute to the meal and was appalled when she saw that they were serving baloney sandwiches and corn chips. As she handed out the food to the men, she apologized to each one of them for the quality of it. A priest who served at the church hosting the meal took exception to her apologies and asked if she could do better. Joy could and she did!
She used her contacts in the specialty food industry and got a group of volunteers together. They took over a kitchen at the University of San Francisco where they prepared meals using donated organic produce, meats, poultry and bread. From November until the end of February, 60 meals a day were prepared and served by volunteers.
There was a group within the church though, that resented the high quality of the meals being served to unhoused guests. Some complained that they couldn’t even serve their own families such a good meal. Then one day while prepping with volunteers for that evening's meal, Joy was physically assaulted by one of the young male parishioners.
She remembers a moment during the assault when she wasn’t sure she would make it and thinking clearly that if she did, she was going to find a way to do more meals more simply to serve more people. She survived, but there were people who implied she was to blame for the attack by asking her what she said to set off her assailant. Joy decided to refocus and dedicate herself to figuring out how to prepare high quality food more simply for more people.
We know that food is medicine and everyone deserves the highest quality ingredients. Fresh, homemade, organic, and sustainable food.
AMWD Core Value
AMWD was born after the 2016 election. Unhappy with the results, Joy and Gene decided to make sandwiches and deliver them to unhoused neighbors. They made and delivered twelve sandwiches and included 2 bottles of water, a piece of fruit and fresh baked cookies in the lunch bag.
The sandwich in the AMWD meal kit today was created as a result of the 2017 San Francisco Women’s March. Joy was a volunteer for it and realized there was no plan to feed the 200 volunteers the day of the march. Along with Gene and their godson and current AMWD board member, Dr. Adrian Aurrochea, they created the organic avocado, tomato, cheese and lettuce soft bun sandwich.
In addition to the sandwich, the AMWD meal toolkit includes a soft organic piece of fruit like a banana, tangerine or peach, a soft cookie and two bottles of water. The risk of foodborne illness is minimized by not including meat, chicken, or fish, mayonnaise or mustard in their sandwiches. The water helps ease the serious health effects of dehydration homeless people experience.
No hard or crunchy food is included because unhoused people often have untreated dental issues or have no teeth at all which makes eating hard food painful. The food they serve provides high nutrition, tastes good and minimizes the risk of gastrointestinal issues by avoiding things like wheat and beans. They also give out Newman’s Own Organic Dog Treats for the dogs some unhoused people have.
AMWD hopes to inspire people from around the world to make meals for unhoused neighbors in their communities. Their meal toolkit is available on their website, so it can be replicated. They are committed to keeping volunteers and meal recipients safe, so they have protocols for delivering the prepared food. They also make themselves available to debrief with volunteers after meal deliveries because while they find joy and love in making and delivering the meals, many of them are emotionally distressed by seeing how so many unhoused people in their community are living.
Loving-kindness in action – not in a soup line, but one personally delivered, fresh & nutritious boxed lunch at a time.
AMWD Core Value
Joy and Gene D’Ovidio making meals for delivery with friends.
Photo credit: A Meal With Dignity
Joy sees unhoused people everywhere. When she and Gene were in Rome for an extended stay a few years ago, they discovered a homeless encampment outside the Vatican. They rallied their friends and acquaintances to join them in making and delivering meals to it. They also have done virtual meal-making parties where people in different cities make meal kits together and then deliver them to unhoused people in their communities. When the pandemic hit, AMWD shut down like everyone else. But Gene realized there were simple precautions they could take to keep volunteers and meal recipients safe, so as soon as they could, they reopened and resumed making organic and sustainable lunches.
Like many people working to end homelessness, Joy believes the systems in place to help are broken and do more harm than good. When a homeless person or family is experiencing a crisis, she resists calling 911 or 311 because the police will be sent, and all too often they cause further trauma. She says homeless shelters in San Francisco are appalling. But she and Gene are in this work for the long run and hopeful that things will improve under Mayor Daniel Lurie, because he has a track record of working to reduce poverty and end homelessness. They plan to work to see legislation passed that invests more money in shelters, requires them to improve the quality of the food they serve and track health conditions, like diabetes, that their guests have to better serve them.
“It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” The problem of homelessness is overwhelming, but anyone can make a sandwich for someone in need, and everyone should.
AMWD Core Value
The problem of homelessness is overwhelming, but AMWD figured out a slice of the crisis they can work on to make a positive difference. And they are getting recognized for the good work they are doing. Joy and Gene were recently awarded the 2024 Andrus Award for Community Service from AARP for the state of California.
A Meal With Dignity volunteers
Photo credit: A Meal With Dignity
Joy accepts that homelessness won’t be solved in her lifetime. But she stays in the work because there are friends who died while living on the street that are in her heart and mind every day. She does this work for them. Feeding people is in her DNA. She loves to do it and has been doing it long enough to know that even one sandwich makes a difference.
Learn More
Visit A Meal With Dignity to learn more about the organization and how to make and deliver meals kits. And if making and delivering a meal is not a good fit, you can learn how to make a tax deductible gift to this volunteer-run organization.
