Laid-Off Branford Woman Starts Nonprofit Feeding The Needy

BRANFORD, CT — A Branford woman who was laid off amid the new coronavirus pandemic has since taken on a new purpose. Instead of dispatching flights for a seaplane operator, Xanthia Pellegrino is now running a nonprofit to deliver free food to children, the elderly and the disabled.

Pellegrino saw evidence of the hardships people were facing in order to get a meal. "I kept seeing news articles about food banks drying up," she told Patch. She was in the middle of delivering hot meals when Patch reached her for comment.

"I saw on Facebook about towns running out of school lunches, or people unable to leave their house to pick them up, so their kids were going hungry," she said. Her grandmother has even been struggling to get food since bus services stopped.

While people in the inner city were facing food shortages, Pellegrino noticed, food being offered in wealthier towns was going unclaimed and being thrown out. "It made me sick that food was being wasted in some places, and inner-city children two towns over were starving," she told Patch.

In late March, Pellegrino decided to take action. "So I went to the store, grabbed 10 pounds of pasta, some sauce, some meatballs and just started cooking. Put up my very first Facebook post letting people in the New Haven community know I had a hot meal if they needed it."

And, so, The Big Food Rescue was born.

The first day, she gave out nine meals. It has since exploded, she told Patch, and she now gives out 50 to 100 meals daily.

Pellegrino started a GoFundMe account to raise money for her efforts. It was created April 16 and has since blown up, raising $4,305 of the $2,000 goal as of publishing time.

Donate to The Big Food Rescue here.

"The amount of support I've received is overwhelming. I am so humbled by the generosity of my community and complete strangers," she said. "It's amazing to me that, at a time like this — where everything is so uncertain and people have lost their jobs, their businesses, everything — that people are opening up their wallets and their hearts to help others in need."

When the pandemic ends, Pellegrino said, she doesn't plan to stop her work. "I know that things aren't going to get back to normal for a very long time, if there is ever going to be a 'normal' again. ... People are still going to be starving. They were starving long before this pandemic happened, and it's only gotten worse."

"As long as I have the capability to do it and the funds to keep doing it, I will go on as long as I possibly can," she said.

Pellegrino told Patch about one family she gives food to almost every day, a laid-off single mother with three small kids. Every time she delivers food, one of the daughters comes running up to the door, smiling and waving. "That just really warms my heart to see the children's reactions ... it's heartbreaking at the same time knowing that they're sitting there hungry until I show up every day. But it's a beautiful thing that I can help out in some small way."

"I can just see the relief in people's eyes when I show up. To me, that is an amazing feeling, that something so small like a hot meal can really just make a huge impact on someone's day."