WEBVTT

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Our names are

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Jerry and Josette Coleman.

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Uh,

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we are founder and co-founder of the Blessed Cookies Community Network,

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and this is our American story.

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What inspired us to start Blessed Cookies was

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during the pandemic we saw that there was a need to bring hope

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into the community

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and we started

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by baking cookies

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and dropping them into people's mailboxes

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and it would send them a text because nobody could get out at that time.

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Everybody was kind of like shut in.

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And we will send them a text saying that your blessed cookies has arrived.

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And

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we started giving out food

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and to the community,

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bagging it up,

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taking it to apartment complexes,

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and just set it on the tables,

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and we reached out to Chesterfield County Food Bank

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and they start donating us bags and we would take those bags out into the community.

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We were watching the news one

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evening and it came on about

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the food disparities and people

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in certain areas in Richmond

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not having access to food.

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And

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I was shocked

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because I had no idea that was going on

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and it just never dawned on me that people did not have access to get food

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and that moved me to

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action.

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The,

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the thing that moved me the most was.

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That this was happening

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right in our backyard

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and we didn't know anything about it,

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so being able to.

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Share food with people that

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needed it but didn't have access to it

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was a big deal

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to be able to uh take food to people nobody was able to get out but

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we could take the food to them

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and

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um

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in that

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is where we found that passion that we needed to

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to get that going.

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How can we help

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serve the community?

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What can we do to make a difference,

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to be an impact in the community,

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and that was

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making sure that families was getting fed.

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An American ideal makes me think of um equality

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because

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everybody deserves.

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The right

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and the opportunity

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to have

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healthy

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fresh food,

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not,

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you know,

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someone's leftovers that are,

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you know,

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rotting or

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things that are really inedible,

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but

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to have.

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You know,

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equally

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the opportunity to

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uh even purchase

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have food availability in their neighborhoods

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where they have access to it.

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I feel like what we're doing is helping to bridge some of that.

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I felt like

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people need to be seen

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and so when we would go out and take food

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to people,

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just the idea

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that someone would come and bring them food to their door.

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Uh,

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we got to soften a lot of hearts

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slowly but surely the little bit that we're doing,

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we feel like it's

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contributing to that American ideal.