Daniel Nat-Davies, Partner Distributions Coordinator with the Capital Area Food Bank (CAFB), is not new to nonprofit work.
“I used to work at the American Red Cross, before coming here nine months ago,” Daniel shares. In fact, he and CAFB Chief Operating Officer Mark McCaffrey worked at the same Red Cross offices.
Yet, Daniel admits to not anticipating the scale of work he would be doing with CAFB. He helps coordinate the School Pantry, Senior Brown Bag, and Mobile Food Pantry programs. The Mobile Food Pantry program alone runs some 22 deliveries weekly, serving around 15,000 households and distributing 700,000 pounds of food monthly.
“You’ll see the elderly and young families, but you’ll also see professionals,” Daniel says, “people in nicer cars pull up to our truck for food pick-ups.”
Whenever Daniel feels overwhelmed by his day-to-day agendas, he thinks back to people and especially families he’s met. In particular, he remembers a single mother and her six children at a pick-up site at Charles Carroll Middle School in New Carrollton, MD. .
“The mother came up to me, started crying and said, ‘I can never make it, so I have to come here,’” Daniel reflects. “She works all day and still has to have her needs met there.”
Stories like these drive Daniel in his position and the food bank as a whole. When he goes out on a future Mobile Pantry visit and can share something with clients, Daniel doesn’t hesitate to say, “You know what? You guys motivate us.”