Project Restore Us adds 150 families to its work delivering culturally appropriate food support
By Tom Meek Thursday, July 29, 2021
Project Restore Us, launched last year by restaurateurs Tracy Chang of Pagu and Irene Li of Mei Mei Restaurant of Boston, and others to help keep their businesses afloat while feeding the community, has expanded by partnering with the Asian American Resource Workshop and Vietnamese American Initiative for Development. On Sunday, working out of Mâe Asian Eatery storefront in Cambridge, 30 volunteers will cart groceries to an additional 150-plus families in need.
Instead of serving its enticing fusion of Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese, Mâe closes on Sundays – and this is when, Chang, Li and the Project Restore Us team perform their work of kindness.
Mâe is at 781 Main St., in The Port neighborhood between Central and Kendall squares.
One of the concepts behind the project was to provide people with nutritional and culturally appropriate food, replacing the random produce and low-nutrition processed fare that comes from most food pantries. The new partnerships allow Project Restore Us to more strategically deliver culturally germane groceries to area Vietnamese and Latinx families affected by Covid – bolstering the communities and hunger awareness in the face of a troubling uptick of hate crimes against Asians.
“The spike in acute anti-Asian violence has highlighted the importance of our work in combating the persistent violence of immigration and food insecurity that wearies and disempowers our Asian American and other immigrant community members,” said Marena Lin, one of the project’s co-founders with Chang, Li and Lily Huang, director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice.
Chang adds that violence toward Asians is not new. “It’s just become more newsworthy during Covid because of the incidents in Atlanta. For instance, my grandparents owned a restaurant in Cambridge (Tokyo Restaurant) from 1988-2000. Multiple times, they were the target of hate crimes. They had a molotov cocktail thrown into their establishment. They were tied up, beaten and robbed on multiple occasions in their homes in Lexington and Winchester,” she said.
The project estimates it has delivered more than 300 tons of food to more than 8,000 households marginalized by the pandemic since May 2020. It plans to send two waves of groceries each month, or as funds dictate. Information is here.
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