Welcome to the Cuba Cultural Center's blog page. It is so lovely to have you with us. The Cuba Cultural Center, Inc. is a small nonprofit working in Western New York, a couple hours from Buffalo and Rochester, serving the counties closes to the PA border. Located in the small town of Cuba, NY the Center has been operating as a food pantry for ten years. Ten years of providing food and other resources to families and individuals in need. Ten years.
So you know our name, how long we've been around, and where we're located... and now you're wondering what exactly we do. As an organization we work to alleviate the symptoms and root causes of poverty through a variety of different programs.
Food distributions are our main public face. In the pre-COVID days, we hosted three large distributions per month - two with fresh items called Mobile Pantries and one with mainly shelf-stable items called the Monthly Pantry. Depending on month and time of year, our distributions normally served 150-200 families with a roughly 400-600 individuals served. The Center provides Emergency Boxes for individuals or families in crisis and assists anywhere from 10-20 households monthly. For several years now, the Center has participated in a BackPack program, providing food to students over weekends and holidays during the school year. Additionally, we provided a weekly warm community meal, serving around 25 individuals weekly.
However when the increased demands and restrictions imposed by COVID arrived, our 'normal' went out the window. Demand for our services went up and as an organization we had to find a way to respond to help our client's increased needs AND protect our volunteers. So here we are, several months into a pandemic and what does our new normal look like? We still have the same Monthly Pantry boxes, distributed differently, of course, to protect clients and volunteers. We are also taking part in distributions coordinated by the State and Federal government.
Beyond providing for the immediate needs of our community, the Center is also vitally involved in advocacy and justice work to fix the broken systems which caused such issues of poverty in the first place. Our advocacy work began shortly after we opened our doors. We serve on the Allegany County Food and Suicide Prevention Coalitions, the Allegany County Housing and Homelessness Task Force, and work collaboratively with a host of area partners. Our Executive Director serves on the board of the Hunger Action Network of New York State, as well as on the NY-501 Regional Continuum of Care for HUD planning purposes.
Still reading? Good. We are working toward a social media re-awakening. A social media manager has been provided through AmeriCorps VISTA and will be exploring different platforms to reach the maximum around of people.
What can you expect moving forward? You can expect blog posts about the work we do, recipes about using tricky pantry food you may receive, and how you can get involved with us in this massive struggle against poverty.
