Project Open Hand, San Francisco Bay Area
When you live in San Francisco, you often wind up milling amongst the clam chowder shacks and tacky t-shirt shops of Fisherman’s Wharf. Not necessarily because you want to, mind you, but because anyone who visits you insists on going there. To me, San Francisco is all about the Castro, the Haight, the houses along the Marina that you could never afford, and yes, that clichéd yet persistently beautiful bridge. To everyone else the world over, it seems, San Francisco is all about the Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, and the bridge. Go figure. I have to admit, the view of the bay is quite nice, and the air is pleasant.
This Sunday, we took our visiting relative to to the big tourist spots, Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco’s famous house of chocolate. As it happened, Ghirardelli Square hosted a chocolate festival this weekend, including chocolate dipped foods, gelati, sundaes, and so on. The festival was free, and tasting tickets were ten dollars to benefit Project Open Hand. Project Open Hand is a food-based organization here in San Francisco that provides nutritious, tasty meals to those in need. The organization began in 1985 with one woman’s effort to help feed and comfort homebound people affected by AIDS. Today, Ruth Brinker’s organization has expanded to help people with other terminal or chronic illnesses, as well as seniors. Since 1985, Project Open Hand has served over nine million meals and delivered over one million bags of groceries.
Bob Brenneman told us the story of Project Open Hand in this video interview. It’s not about leftovers and scarcity, he says, it’s about sharing the bounty with those who need it most.
(Apologies for the sound. The interview took place at the volunteer sign-up, and as you can hear, there were quite a few volunteers!)
