This year - the generosity of our donors and parters toward the work of Love Out Loud had a far-reaching and multiplying effect across our community. Your investment was instrumental during a year where churches, organizations and individuals came together in new partnerships to:
Ø provide food
Ø make and/or distribute masks
Ø launch remote learning centers
Ø join crucial conversations around race, justice and equity
Ø serve the city through Gift Mart and Christmas for the City
Ø and any number of other thriving efforts.
CHECK OUT SOME OF THE STORIES:
Mask the City
In partnership with 192 local churches and organizations we distributed 75,000 donated masks to individuals working at or below the poverty line and seniors living independently on a fixed income. The relational model allowed masks to be distributed to, oftentimes to the front door of, individuals in need and vulnerable to the virus when masks were hard to access.
Above you’ll see the president of Boston Thurmond United as she picked up the first set of masks for individuals in their community.
The masks were distributed with instructions on how to wear, wash, use, and why to help spread true health information since much information had been going around.
Healthy Food for Kids
In partnership with The Ministers Conference of Winston-Salem and Vicinity, Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC, & Providence Community Meals - we distribute healthy dinners to children and their families at 15 local churches and community organizations between March 23 - August 28.
We distributed OVER 290,000 meals at:
Elevation Church, Ephesus SDA, Exodus Baptist, First Baptist - Highland, Fulton Family YMCA, Great Commission Community Church, Iglesia Cristiana sin Fronteras, Life Changing Transformation Church, The Love Church, Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, The Saltbox, Shiloh Baptist, United Metropolitan Missionary Baptist, Winston Lake YMCA, Winston Salem NAACP
Supporting Minority Owned Caterers & Restaurants
In addition, Love Out Loud received a grant from the City of Winston-Salem to provide over 22,000 of these meals, prepared by local minority-owned businesses to fill the weekend food gaps.
We could not have done any of this without the partnership of over 60 organizations, faith-groups, schools, government, and businesses, and LOTS of volunteers!!
Blessing Bags
In addition to food, organizations and individuals donated “loveys” - craft supplies, candy, snacks, toys, Easter eggs, etc - for us to distribute to children. We distributed several thousand blessing bags through the several months we were distributing food.
We’re especially thankful to Forsyth Country Day School & Calvary Baptist School for donating loads of snacks!!
New & Amazing Staffing
In addition to an amazing team of full-time, part-time, and volunteer staff - we have amazing volunteers that work alongside the Love Out Loud team throughout the year.
In December - we added two new staff members - one supporting our connecting and mobilizing and one focusing on Early Childhood Health & Education.
Check out a full list of our Staff, Board, and even this summers interns (virtual and in person this year!).
You can also join us at ByGood Coffee on Thursday Mornings from 8 - 9:00am
30 Days of Serving
To mark 10 years since the first “Love Out Loud” 30-Days of Serving Campaign, we hosted another this year.
Each day from November 20 - December 19 we highlighted a specific community need and ways to engage and donate to those needs - as well as hosted prayer, devotion and reflection on our Facebook.
A Meaningful (Drive Thru) Christmas Experience
This was our 13th year of celebrating Christmas for the City - of course this year it looked a little different - but together we hosted over 400 community members for a Drive Thru experience at the WS Fairgrounds with nonprofits and organizations providing experiences as you drove by and a dynamic Drive In worship service where community truly was felt.
The Drive-In experience is still available online for you to join in!
Gift Mart & Cycle Recycle
Like Christmas for the City - Gift Mart continued this year - providing gifts for over 1,400 children that were picked out by their guardians for them.
In addition, this year the Gift Mart bike program evolved into a group called Cycle Recycle - which collected and restored over 200 bikes for children this Christmas and distributed over 225 helmets.
Community Service in a Pandemic
Though many organizations had to halt their processes and limit volunteers due to COVID, there were also organizations that needed additional volunteers to stay operational.
Love Out Loud worked with local health professionals to develop health guidelines early in the pandemic and used BASE (volunteer.loveoutloudws.com), our online volunteer engagement platform, to amplify needs and help organizations recruit much needed volunteers - in person and virtual!
Equity Forsyth
During the increasing calls for justice and equity this summer - Love Out Loud helped facilitate a group called “Equity Forsyth” which assisted in directing individuals to ways to learn, give, and engage with racial equity and organizations doing that work in our community.
This group is also deeply involved in Remote Learning Centers and making sure students have the educational resources they need to not only survive, but hope to thrive in this season.
Bagel Station!
We were thankful for partners from all kinds of places in the community - Bagel Station contacted us to see if they could distribute additional bagels to the community through our food sites!
Sanitizer in Unexpected Places
Love Out Loud believes firmly in the “stone soup” policy with the knowledge that blessings come from all different places and we can do increasingly more together when we all bring what we do best to the table.
A perfect example of this was Broad Branch Distillery - who converted their downtown distilling space to be able to create hand sanitizer and gave it to the community for free!
They even gave us a couple larger bottles to be able to use at our distribution sites!