Hours before lunchtime, Simone Randolph stood in Canal Park in Southeast Washington, scribbling delivery details across brown paper shopping bags. Volunteers then filled each of them with a fresh Valencia orange and a container of hot chicken curry from Baltimore’s Asian fusion restaurant Ekiben.
The meals, nearly 300 of them, would be brought later that Wednesday to child care workers and first responders at military bases, all of whom had been working without pay during the federal government shutdown.
Hours before lunchtime, Simone Randolph stood in Canal Park in Southeast Washington, scribbling delivery details across brown paper shopping bags. Volunteers then filled each of them with a fresh Valencia orange and a container of hot chicken curry from Baltimore’s Asian fusion restaurant Ekiben.
The meals, nearly 300 of them, would be brought later that Wednesday to child care workers and first responders at military bases, all of whom had been working without pay during the federal government shutdown.
“I know what it’s like during a shutdown and not getting paid. I know that it’s extremely stressful,” said Randolph, a furloughed federal worker herself.
For the past few weeks, Randolph, 36, has been packing meals every morning with staff and volunteers from international food aid group World Central Kitchen. She estimates that by her last delivery on Friday, she will have given out over 3,000 meals.
Randolph began organizing the deliveries after learning that staffers at her children’s day care at Joint Base Andrews were unpaid. Randolph’s husband serves in the honor guard for the Space Force and their son Braylon, 3, and 14-month-old daughter Josephine attend day care on the Andrews base, near the family’s home.
At first, Randolph, a digital strategy director for the Department of the Interior, only planned to purchase two days’ worth of breakfasts for the staff. But after soliciting donations on social media from other military families and friends, she found herself with hundreds of dollars and much more than she expected.
“I distinctively remember pausing in Costco and being like, ‘Uh, this could be a lot more than what I originally thought it might be,’” she said.
After delivering the first round of meals, Randolph asked for help from World Central Kitchen, which had been distributing lunches for feds throughout the city. They obliged, agreeing to donate meals for her daily deliveries to employees who can’t leave their jobs to stand in line. Randolph also enlisted her own cadre of volunteers from the military community, including many active-duty members, to help.
“It’s a lot of just us coming together in solidarity to make sure our community is fed and taken care of,” said Gerald Darling, 32, a private chef who led the World Central Kitchen distribution center in Southeast on Wednesday.
That morning, Rebecca Goldman carefully placed pieces of fresh fruit and plastic containers of curry into the sacks Randolph designated for deliveries. Before Goldman lost her job when USAID shuttered, she provided large-scale food distributions abroad for more than a decade.
Since late October, the District resident has volunteered several days a week for World Central Kitchen and helped ensure Randolph’s deliveries get filled and other federal workers get fed, even if the work can be tiring.
“I’d rather be exhausted doing this. This makes me feel like I’m doing something rewarding with my time instead of binge-watching Netflix and applying for jobs that I’m not hearing back from,” Goldman said. “I think they’re doing amazing work. They’re giving out nutritious, delicious food to people that need it.”
“Americans forget about the good they can do,” she added.
By 10:45 a.m., the meals were traveling in WCK-branded insulated satchels headed to hungry feds, including three tucked in Randolph’s Toyota 4Runner, behind her kid’s car seats.
Randolph began her postcollege career as a Peace Corps volunteer working on food insecurity missions in Madagascar and upon returning to the U.S. tried to work for the SNAP food assistance agency, but didn’t land a job.
Instead, she began her federal career in communications with the Environmental Protection Agency in 2016 and later worked for the Secretary of Labor before joining the Interior Department.
Five years ago, during the 2019 government shutdown, Randolph herself stood in the free lunch lines every day, lived off credit cards and spent hours on the phone pleading for forbearance.
“I remember, calling all the creditors and being like, ‘I can’t pay my bills’, Randolph said.
That Wednesday, she headed to a U.S. Coast Guard facility in Southeast. As she parked outside the campus, Child Development Center Director Colleen Smith and staffer Ebony Benton met Randolph with smiles warmer than the curry and a note of thanks.
“Hi!” Randolph said, handing off two brown sacks to the women. “We are going to do meals through Friday,” she pledged.
“We love you but we’ll be glad to get our paychecks,” Smith joked. “We appreciate you.”
“We absolutely do,” Benton added.
Smith said that some of her staff are living paycheck to paycheck and to have another furloughed federal employee show “the heart” to help is immeasurable.
Benton said that child care workers can be overlooked, even though many earned college degrees and dedicate themselves to their careers.
“We take it serious. We love what we do every day; that’s why we’re here,” Benton said.
Within minutes, Randolph headed to the next destination at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling to deliver meals to three child care centers on base. There, 18 staffers had been caring for more than 175 children without pay and without complaint, said assistant director LaTonya Scales.
The deliveries have been a bright spot, she said.
“I thank you,” Scales told Randolph. “They are very grateful for these meals. The food is good. Nothing is going to waste.”
With the shutdown — the longest in history — now over, Randolph said Thursday that she feels “deeply relieved” that federal workers will finally get paid. She came away from the experience inspired by how much people were willing to help.
“This was a reminder that community is powerful, and we are capable of taking care of each other in really beautiful ways,” she said.
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