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Mitchell Conley Email
Food Services Manager . Project Angel Heart
Denver, CO
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Dedicated members of the Denver community founded Project Angel Heart in 1991. They were determined to ensure that those living with HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses were receiving proper nutrition -- vital in the fight against disease. Project Angel Heart initially served 12 clients from a single, donated pan of lasagna. In 2009, Project Angel Heart delivered over 410,223 meals to 1,842 clients, free of charge. During eighteen years of phenomenal growth, our goal has always remained the same: `meals with love' for men, women, and children living with life-threatening illness. Support from the community has been unwavering since those first meals were delivered in 1991. Our delivery zone has expanded from 150 square miles of central Denver to encompass delivery boundaries that include 750 square miles of metropolitan Denver and 150 square miles in the Colorado Springs area. Such growth would not have been possible without our corps of dedicated volunteers. In 2009, 3,017 people donated 43,282 hours of their time preparing food in the kitchen, driving 72,020 miles to deliver meals to clients' homes, helping in the office, and assisting with fundraising events. For over 800 clients served each week, Project Angel Heart embodies stability and hope by providing nutritious meals, free of charge, and specifically prepared to meet the nutritional needs of each individual client. Life-threatening illnesses can drain a person's energy and finances, threaten their dignity, limit their independence, and leave them feeling alone and vulnerable. Project Angel Heart provides life-saving nutrition necessary for physical, emotional, and financial health. In 1991, founder Charles Robbins returned home to Denver from living in Los Angeles to find friends living with AIDS wasting away before his eyes. That fall, he founded Project Angel Heart, modeling it after Project Angel Food, the Los Angeles organization where he had been a volunteer. At first, Charles and a group of friends simply solicited food from local restaurants and distributed it on the weekends from their homes. Project Angel Heart's first meal was a pan of lasagna donated by Racines restaurant and delivered to 12 clients. But soon, the agency grew to need its own kitchen. St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Capitol Hill welcomed and embraced Project Angel Heart. At that time, the mission was not limited to people living with HIV/AIDS, but included people with other life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and multiple sclerosis. Over the next three years, Project Angel Heart grew steadily both in the number of clients served and the services provided. By 1994, Project Angel Heart was delivering meals six days per week. The agency was also operating The Center for Living, a drop-in center that offered counseling and support groups, among other services. Due to the expanded scope of our service, decreased funding, and a constantly increasing need for services to HIV/AIDS clients, Project Angel Heart's Board of Directors made the decision in 1995 to narrow our mission to serving only those infected with HIV/AIDS. In early 1996, Project Angel Heart moved to a larger kitchen at Our Savior's Lutheran Church, also in Capitol Hill. Though the staff could not have anticipated it, the move was just in time. That fall, the FDA approved a new class of promising drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS which, when used in combination with other drugs, caused the HIV/AIDS-related death rates to plummet. The result was that more people than ever were living with HIV/AIDS and needing various human services. In the spring of 1997 alone, demand for Project Angel Heart meals increased by 60%. Over the next couple years, infection rates remained high and the side effects of near-toxic drug regimens were catching up with our clients. Others had developed resistance to the drugs. HIV/AIDS was also then spreading extremely quickly in so-called "emerging populations" - those living in poverty or facing other mental or physical medical diagnosis besides HIV, any of which might compromise their ability to obtain or respond to treatment. As a result of these trends, demand for our services continued to grow both in terms of number of clients and depth of need. We continued to accept all eligible HIV/AIDS clients while we increased the size of our main meals and added a breakfast option for those with no other source of food. In 1999, acknowledging the intense community need for home-delivered meals among people living with cancer and other life-threatening diseases besides HIV/AIDS, the Board of Directors declared its intention to re-expand Project Angel Heart's mission to include people living with any life-threatening illness. But as space capacity at Our Savior's Lutheran Church was already running low (resulting in the initiation of a waiting list in early 2000), such expansion could obviously not happen until the agency moved into a larger kitchen. Luckily, through a very fortuitous set of circumstances, we discovered an available kitchen at 4190 Garfield Street - big, modern, affordable, and easy to clean. Project Angel Heart leaders began working to raise money necessary to take advantage of this unique opportunity. Randy Barbour, long-time kitchen volunteer and board member, volunteered to spearhead the capital campaign to make this new kitchen a reality for Project Angel Heart. Tragically, Randy was then diagnosed with colon cancer and died in April 2000, before the campaign was complete. In his memory, Project Angel Heart's new kitchen was christened "Randy's Kitchen." In early 2001, Project Angel Heart successfully completed its $600,000 capital campaign, raising over $800,000 to remodel the kitchen and build out offices. As soon as we moved in the spring of 2001, we eliminated our waiting list and began to expand our boundaries to the north, where we had high concentrations of eligible clients. That summer, we acquired equipment necessary to offer our clients the option of receiving a week's worth of frozen meals. By early 2002, about half of our clients had chosen this option. Even while our service were limited to the HIV/AIDS community, we never stopped receiving calls from people with many different life-threatening illnesses who had nowhere else to turn. Once we re-expanded our mission, these clients came to us in droves. By early 2002, roughly 30% of our clients were living with a disease other than HIV/AIDS. With the frozen meal program and our expanded mission, Project Angel Heart continued to increase services into the suburbs throughout 2002 and 2003. During this expansion, we continued to see client numbers increase while, for the first time, seeing annual meal numbers decrease. This new trend was due to serving more seniors and more people living with diseases other than HIV/AIDS, who generally cannot eat the same volume of food that people living with HIV/AIDS need. Also, in 2003, client eligibility requirements (applied to all new clients beginning in 2001), were retroactively applied to all clients. In 2005, after feasibility research and much planning, Project Angel Heart launched service to Colorado Springs. Meals for Colorado Springs clients are prepared in Randy's Kitchen and delivered to First United Methodist Church in Colorado Springs via a freezer truck. From there, distribution works just as it does now in Denver: local volunteers pick up the meals from distribution points and, using their own cars and gas, deliver them to clients' homes. On the first day of service to Colorado Springs, 13 people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer, or another life-threatening disease received meals. Now, over 300 Colorado Spring clients per year receive Project Angel Heart meals, and the number continues to grow.Project Angel Heart Address
4950 Washington StreetDenver, CO
United States