Saffrey: People experiencing homelessness are being fed

People experiencing homelessness will continue to be fed during this period of the COVID-19 pandemic, President of The Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH), Kemar Saffrey said.

On Sunday Saffrey chaired a meeting between his organization and several other charities via ZOOM, in response to questions by several Barbadians about whether those experiencing homelessness were currently being looked after.

According to Saffrey, several organizations in official and non-official capacities still tend to those who come to them in need in Bridgetown, and though the COVID-19 pandemic has caused these organizations to change the way they give assistance during this time, efforts to serve people have not ceased.

“[We] are still reaching the homeless and the less fortunate on a particular day. They are not going unfed, and as I said, there are as much as five feeding programmes per day, with persons spontaneously showing up to feed the homeless, and we have a lot of that where persons are turning up to feed. There are a lot of churches, the Salvation Army does feedings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at their 11 o’clock time” he said.

The Salvation Army, as well as BAEH are only two out of the several organizations carrying out feeding programmes during the week.

Others such as Rotary International, Breaking Bread, Universal Church, Calvary Moravian Church, Street Lamp Ministries and more, are all part of the group called StreetLink Barbados. They feed between 90 and 180 people a week, per group.

When asked if the Government had reached out to any of the organizations in order to help with the safety during COVID-19, Saffrey said he was not aware of any special attention being given by the Government at this time.

“Our group StreetLink, which has about 19 members, all who feed at different times locations, I think all of us can be credited because we are the ones telling them to keep their distance, we are the ones telling them to sanitize [and] we are the ones telling them wear a mask. We are the ones who have relationships with them, so in doing that, that can [be] a testimony, that what we have been doing as a group, has been keeping the homeless safe.

“Yes there is the one-off case that we had, but we continually ring it in their ears [with] every feeding that they go to that we know of, that they are told to put on their mask. If they do not have a mask, we are issuing them with masks. We are making sure that they social distance, and we make sure they do everything that they are supposed to do. In most parts as it relates to the feeding groups we know of, they are following that,” he said. (SB)