The Queer Roots of New York’s Life-Saving Food Charity
Medically-tailored meals for the most vulnerable at God’s Love We Deliver
In 1985, as a volunteer at Cabrini Hospice, Ganga Stone delivered a bag of groceries to Richard Sale, a man living with AIDS. Upon receiving the bag, he threw it on the floor in frustration. Sale could barely stand — how was he supposed to turn a bag of ingredients into his supper?
The next day, Stone brought Sale a deli-bought meal. The day after that, she personally prepared a meal that was tailored to his ailing body’s dietary needs.
As she walked to Sale’s to drop off the meal, Stone was stopped on the street by a minister, who asked where she was going and what she was doing. Stone told him she was delivering food to a sick friend, to which he replied, “you’re not just delivering food… you’re delivering God’s love.”
Within the year, Ganga Stone and her friend Jane Best founded God’s Love We Deliver, a secular New York charity that cooks and home-delivers nutritious, medically-tailored meals to people too sick to shop or cook for themselves. At the time, they worked in collaboration with a local restaurant and delivered — mostly by bike — 50 meals a day to those living with AIDS in Manhattan. They grew rapidly to meet the speed and ferocity of the…
