Beverly Hills pastor’s idea — reaching LA’s poorest in a unique way

Father Ed Benioff says he’s a bit of an “activist,” so he became pretty restless when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and people were experiencing extreme food insecurity. He felt compelled to act. Somehow. Any way he could.

“I wasn't going to sit around and read books and go on retreat,” he said. “I said we’ve got to do something.”

For Benioff, pastor at Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, that “something” at first meant organizing volunteers to make and distribute sandwiches to the needy once a day. Then a few times a week. Eventually, they expanded to make 600 sandwiches a day, seven days a week.

That simple effort has now grown into Feed My Poor, a nonprofit organization started by Benioff in 2021. Taking the Gospel of Matthew 25 (“For I was hungry and you gave me food”) and Mother Teresa as inspiration, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit uses employees, cooks, and volunteers to provide home-cooked meals to the hungry in areas such as Skid Row, Mid-Wilshire and Venice Beach.

“Feed My Poor is a humanitarian nonprofit,” Benioff said. “This is a humanitarian crisis. It’s not necessarily a religious crisis.”

After a year of sandwiches, Father Ed thought: How can we expand our outreach to where the needs are and maybe try some hot meals?

The first decision was to lease a food truck, where they’ve used the mobile kitchen to transport hot meals to places with higher numbers of homeless.

The second was to turn the Feed My Poor effort into a nonprofit organization so they could hire employees and solicit donations from individuals and businesses outside of Good Shepherd Church.

“Because it’s a business, we have employees, and we pay them,” Benioff said. “And when you have employees, you can demand a certain level of excellence and a standard.

“A lot of work goes in and all the credit goes to our very dedicated employees.”

One of those employees is Marisol Ortiz, who knows firsthand what it’s like to be homeless.

A single mother, when she was 24 weeks pregnant with her fourth child, she slipped and fell where she was living in Sylmar, forcing her to stop working as a tamale street vendor. When she couldn’t make ends meet, Ortiz didn’t know how she was going to put a roof over the head of her and her four kids.

“I never knew about shelters in California,” she said. “So the only way I did it is God put me in a place where you’re going to only be following him.”

She eventually found a haven at the San Fernando Rescue Mission shortly after she gave birth, where she stayed for a few months to get back on her feet.

During the pandemic, she was again desperate. With selling tamales once again disrupted, she needed another lifeline. On a Wednesday night, Ortiz prayed, asking God for help, to give her a job — no, a mission — where her talents could be utilized.

The next morning, Marisol’s sister-in-law, Araceli Orta, called and said a priest was looking for someone to cook for the homeless.

That was Father Ed.

“He’s been a gift to my life. He’s been my supporter,” said Ortiz, a parishioner at St. Didacus Church in Sylmar. “He’s been chosen by God to be doing what he’s doing right now. I couldn’t have asked for anything else.”

Now Ortiz works with her sister-in-law and her sister, Cruz Adriana Ortiz, to prep, cook and deliver hot meals seven days a week. Each morning, they make 300 meals — or more, if they can stretch it, Ortiz said — depending on the supplies that have been purchased and food that has been donated.

The dishes they come up with are mouth-watering: Burritos, teriyaki chicken, pasta, chili beans, chicken soup.

The truck travels to MacArthur Park three times a week, and then two days each at Gladys Park in downtown Los Aneles and Towne and 5th Street near Skid Row. Sandwiches are still given to beach communities such as Venice and Santa Monica, plus communities like Westwood, Hollywood or “wherever the need is,” Benioff said.

When the food truck arrives at its location at noon, the workers prepare the food, grill some bread, hand out some fruit and water, and people are satisfied, at least for one day.

“Give them the best meal we can for the one day we see them,” Ortiz said. “And it’s fresh food. It’s warm food.”

Benioff compares the meals, in a way, to the Eucharist.

“This is kind of their holy Communion,” he said. “A lot of these people are unchurched. They're never going to go into church. This is going to be their sacred meal for them and we want to let them know in just a small gesture, a small token, that God loves them.”

Since he doesn’t have children, Benioff sees the homeless they’re serving as his own.

“It’s really teaching me about true fatherhood,” he said. “We’re all called to sacrifice for our children.

“It really allows me to see how deep the demands are of being a true father. You’ve got to stretch for all your kids, and sometimes there's nothing left for you, but that's why we reach up to God.”

Although the areas they travel to can be rough — the truck has broken down before and people have occasionally acted violently toward the workers — Ortiz said she’s not scared anymore because of her trust in God.

“We’re doing God’s mission here,” she said. “God says go, get up and feed my children because they’re hungry.

“Am I in doing this just for providing money or there is someone higher and bigger protecting me to keep me here? When we are done with the last meal, it’s like, OK, mission is accomplished. Let’s go home.”

Father Ed believes so much in the Feed My Poor program that despite the heavy price tag — $50,000 a month — he’s hoping to partner with parishes in the Our Lady of the Angels pastoral region and maybe even the entire archdiocese to make the local Church “the leaders in charity.”

“We’re the ones that should be setting the bar,” Benioff said. “We should be inspiring others. Do we wait for the politicians to act? No, it's the opposite. We should be the leaders. So I think the Lord has put that on my heart.”

The program is is receiving funding from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Called to Renew campaign, and Benioff has asked believers to “give till it hurts.”

“I’m eternally indebted to this community, and I’m so impressed,” he said. “And I think good people, believers, they will respond when asked.

“So in a diplomatic, charitable way, we want to challenge our brothers and sisters that are believers to say, hey, let's give till it hurts because that’s when we know it’s really good.”

To volunteer or donate to Feed My Poor, visit feedmypoor.com.