Miracle on South Central a Huge Success

As the Los Angeles Coordinator or the Miracle on South Central Ave., I want to thank all the wonderful volunteers who turned out and the the fortunate givers whose donations we received.

We gave away food boxes that will last weeks to over 3000 families and around 9000 people came through our lines as we also gave out hygene products, toys, water and Avon came out and gave gift baskets to all the families.

We had celebs and Los Angeles Lakers and singers and all around fun. If you want to see the photos and videos go to this link. www.flickr.com/photos/jwnajarian/sets/72157611273935986/

The trucks started rolling in around 3am in the morning. The line started around 5am slowly at first with only about 12 or 15 people to start. My good friend Francis Fiermonte or White Emerald Financial Group stayed the night at my place so we could get down to the Salvation Army building early. Francis’ job was to take the camera and document the day for me. I took the video cam with me to get some video. As it turned out I got too busy to continue to video the event, but Francis did a great job of taking shots all through the day.

It was an incredible sight that we sadly did not catch. As we drove up at 6am South Central Ave was dark except for red truck tail lights as far as the eye could see. There were 14 full size trucks lined up in the center divider in front of the center and I tell you it was amazing. The volunteers and truck drivers unloaded without a break until noon and I believe we still missed 2 trucks. Since we were still unloading at noon we ended up starting an hour late. Some people were not too happy, but we had planned in advance and we staggered the times at which people would show up to get food. This helped keep things under control.

The line just kept getting longer and longer, but I was assured that the line had rarely gone beyond the building. Mortimer of the Salvation Army came up with the idea of doing a dual line giveaway to speed things up. This was brilliant and we were able to get the lines moving rather fast. This did not stop the line from going beyond the building by about six blocks.

We had over 200 volunteers help out and we were short. It was difficulft finding relief for people who had been on the line or handing out food. The funny thing is that most of the volunteers when asked if they wanted relief refused. What a great group. Everyone took pride in what they were doing and most did not want to leave when there were so many that needed help.

In the last 2 years Spryte Loriano with Feed333.org, has put together the largest one day food giveaway in our nation’s history. This year she put together several events over many days in different cities. I believe it was the largest collaborative food giveaway in our nation’s history. The sponsors to name a few, were Humanity Unites Brilliance, Feed the Children, The Salvation Army, The World Trust, The NBA Players Association and others.