Executives from the Avangrid Foundation joined Bridgeport Rescue Mission staff on Friday to officially unveil a newly upgraded kitchen, including a new walk-in refrigerator installed with support from a Foundation grant. After a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony at BRM’s Fairfield Avenue campus, the Foundation executives served warm meals to the region’s hungry and homeless.
“This generous support from the Avangrid Foundation is helping Bridgeport Rescue Mission meet one of the most basic human needs in our community: feeding the hungry,” BRM Executive Director Terry Wilcox said.
The $35,000 grant from the Foundation, which is the charitable foundation of the parent of United Illuminating, Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas, allowed BRM to install an energy-efficient walk-in refrigerator as part of a larger project to upgrade its commercial kitchen. The Foundation was also able to help BRM qualify for additional grants and state energy efficiency incentives in support of the project.
Before the renovations, Wilcox explained, the mission’s kitchen could not accommodate a refrigerator large enough to hold all the meals BRM produces on a daily basis. Instead, volunteers had to trek back and forth to an outdoor refrigeration unit.
“The new indoor unit adds both needed refrigeration space and efficiency to our food ministry operation and will have a dramatic impact on the ability of volunteers and staff to prepare and store meals that support our food programs,” Wilcox said.
“The Avangrid Foundation is pleased to help Bridgeport Rescue Mission in its efforts to fight hunger and homelessness, which is a real and visible problem in our communities,” said Robert D. Kump, the Foundation’s President. “We expect this investment will enhance the critical mission of Bridgeport Rescue Mission in providing nourishment to those in need and ‘fighting poverty from the inside out’.”
“By partnering with organizations such as Bridgeport Rescue Mission, the Avangrid Foundation will continue to deepen our contribution to the health and prosperity of the communities where our companies have been rooted for more than a century,” Kump added.
For more information on the Mission’s programs and services for homeless and hurting men, women and children, contact Donna Romano, Director of Marketing, at the numbers listed above. Or visit www.BridgeportRescueMission.org.