(I'm short of time but wanted to share this story, so I am reprinting it in its entirety from the members-only edition of Future Crunch )
Meet Doramise Moreau, a 60 year old grandmother and part-time janitor in Miami, who has single-handedly cooked a thousand meals every week since the beginning of the pandemic to help people in her local community who have struggled to put food on the table.
Doramise, a widow, lives with her children, nephew and three grandchildren and cooks the huge volume of food in the tiny kitchen of her home that was built by Habitat for Humanity. Despite her arduous work as a janitor, every Thursday night Doramise borrows a truck from her local church to buy groceries and on Fridays catches the bus home from work to cook up trays of chicken, turkey, beans and yellow rice, often working into the early hours of Saturday morning when she delivers the food to the church.
Doramise’s passion for feeding people started young. Growing up in a small village in Haiti, she would often take food from her parents’ pantry to give to someone who needed it and despite her mothers’ constant scolding, was undeterred. “I told her, ‘You can whup me today, you can whup me tomorrow, but I’m going to continue to do it.’”
Decades later Doramise is still feeding her village, sending monthly food pallets back to her family and neighbours, despite her modest salary. And it’s not just the hungry that she cares for. Every morning before work, Doramise stops by her church to prepare a special Haitian hot tea and other remedies to help the church’s staff, police and local community leaders keep their immune system strong during the pandemic.
Doramise attributes her inexhaustible drive to her faith. “If you give from your heart and never think about yourself, God will provide for you every day. The refrigerator will never be without food.”