He started distributing food with five of his grandchildren and a few friends. Now, his volunteers serve 16,000 people a month.

Six months ago, Gloria Brown and Yvonne McGhee, best friends since high school, both retired — Brown from ShopRite’s produce department and McGhee from Temple University Hospital. Both discovered a gap between the start of their Social Security payments and the end of their paychecks. And both found a solution to help them eat in the meantime — the TCRC Community Healing Center.

Since the start of COVID-19, J. Jondhi Harrell, founder and executive director of TCRC Community Healing Center, has provided an outdoor weekly food giveaway to help ease food insecurity in the city.

“We started outside because of COVID and now we do it regardless of weather,” said Harrell, as he helped unload and unpack stacks of food boxes as hundreds moved through the line.

This September, Harrell added a third distribution day, Monday, in West Philadelphia at the First African Baptist Church at 67th and Lansdowne Avenue. The other sites are in North Philadelphia and are also in collaboration with a church — Berean Presbyterian Church near Temple University on Fridays and Nazarene Baptist Church on Wednesdays.

It was on a recent Wednesday that a pile of bright orange peppers caught Anne’s attention as she rode the bus past food tables set up at Germantown Avenue and Lycoming Street. “I love peppers,” she said, declining to give her full name but happy to provide cooking tips.

“There should be no hungry people in Philadelphia.”

She returned home, grabbed a West Mount Airy neighbor, Gregory Bartelle, and joined the line. ”They do an excellent job. It’s a good thing,” Bartelle said, “There should be no hungry people in Philadelphia.”

Across the city, one out of every 10 households lacks access to affordable healthy food on a consistent basis. During the 2020-21 school year, the School District of Philadelphia reported a 16.5% rate of food insecurity among School District households and almost 50% of responding principals said that food insecurity was a great or moderate challenge.

TCRC’s food giveaway is part of the nation’s patchwork effort to make certain there is food available. It is a mixture of federal assistance programs, food banks, community farms and gardens, as well as food pantries and community refrigerators.

“People need food and it’s going to get worse,” Harrell predicted.

Unlike food lines of yore where consumer choice was not an option, people were able to select from an assortment — meat, pasta, dried fruit and nuts, milk (cow or almond), and everyone received a box of fresh vegetables including cabbage, green beans, zucchini, and eggplant.

Some came for themselves, while others hauled food home to help the seniors, homebound, and those without transportation in their communities. Anne finished shopping with nectarines and peppers for herself and a bounty to share. “This is one of the most organized food giveaways I’ve seen,” she said.

Part of the organization is the small army of volunteers Harrell has marshaled. Betty Foster has volunteered for three or four years and now steps in when Harrell is unavailable. “We have folks of different cultures and people are in need,” Foster said.

“This is how you build community.”

If people complain about the line speed, Harrell invites them to join his 60 volunteers. “This is how you build community,” he explained.

McGhee and Brown both decided to volunteer and started helping with setting up, which starts at 6a.m. When asked about customer favorites, Brown quickly responded: “Pistachios. One big bag is $27 in the store and when we have pistachios it really goes.”

Harrell is originally from Levittown and grew up an ardent Eagles fan. But he is also a returning citizen who spent a total of 25 years in federal prison for bank robbery.

During that time, with the help of mentors as part of a Circle of Consciousness, he came to the decision that he needed to change and atone for the harm he did, guided by the question: “How can we heal our community, especially in the areas where we tore it apart?”

Harrell said the experience raised his focus to deal “with what he was doing as a community.” Over the years, he has become a much sought-after reentry expert and has earned a bachelor’s degree in human services management from the University of Phoenix and a master’s degree in social work at Temple University.

In 2010 he started TCRC, a small reentry center on North Broad Street. Food scarcity work became a part of his work offerings as a survival tactic. When COVID struck, the city stopped funding nonessential programs and his nonprofit was considered nonessential. “How do I become essential?” Harrell recalled pondering.

To change TCRC’s status, he started distributing food. At first it was Harrell, five of his grandchildren, and a few friends serving a couple of hundred people. Now, almost 16,000 people a month will stream through TCRC’s doors, said Harrell, and he expects the number to grow.

The problems of COVID have morphed into the problems with food inflation, which is making eating even harder for so many. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture research, food prices are predicted to increase between 8.5 and 9.5%.

And as food insecurity has worsened, demand for TCRC’s food pantry has increased. Currently, Harrell said TCRC is Share Food Program’s largest distribution site.

“We get 600 cases of assorted food and 600 cases of high-demand food,” Harrell said, but, he added, “We never have enough meat. Also, juices, dairy products, eggs, butter, and bread. There are 70 pantries [in Philadelphia] and all of us need bread.”