Local businessman John Baldwin is a past board member of Northshore Food Bank and founder of the Covington Rotary Club’s Feeding the Needy program.
Feeding the Needy was started as another hot holiday meal delivery program through the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s office abruptly stopped in 2002. Every year, Deacon Skip, a deacon at St Peter Catholic Church and one of the founders of what was then Covington Food Bank, would pick up Christmas meals across the lake and bring them to Covington to be distributed to families that couldn’t afford a holiday meal.
Mr. Baldwin, who was a parishioner at St Peter’s and had also developed a relationship with Deacon Skip when he purchased a car from his dealership, recognized the need to continue the program after the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s office stopped.
At the time, Mr. Baldwin volunteered to deliver meals at the time and recalls visiting a family in Folsom with young children living in a mobile home in disrepair, “There were holes in the doors and windows where any animal could just come and go,” he told us. “But these kids weren’t fighting over toys or asking for anything. They were grateful. And to me, that was God’s message that this program had to exist.”
Mr. Baldwin thought the rotary club could manage a holiday meal program for the 65 families registered with the food bank at the time. Working with Craig Babylon, a noted cook and owner of multiple Popeye’s franchises, they created a plan to cook at St Scholastica and deliver these meals. However, word spread and a news article about the new program came out in the Times-Picayune. As a result, more families inquired about the hot holiday meal program and they went from 65 registered families to 300! This led to a larger undertaking where local businesses, including The Lakehouse and Champagne Beverage, pitched in with refrigerated trucks to store and move items as they had already outgrown SSA’s kitchen and needed to relocate to St Paul’s School to prepare the meals.
Mr. Baldwin also shared that every year he makes sure all the families have been provided for before he celebrates Christmas with his own family, and even hands out his phone number in case anyone is overlooked and doesn’t receive their meal.
As a result of the work of Mr. Baldwin and the Covington Rotary, families, including many that we serve, have been able to receive a holiday meal since the program launched in 2002. The program now serves families in both St Tammany and Washington Parish.
Mr. Baldwin went on to serve on Northshore Food Bank’s board from 2014-2019. Food bank employees fondly recall how he would come in personally to talk with program participants and ask if they wanted a hot meal delivered on Christmas day.
