Laura Schwartz is a licensed Realtor in VA, D.C. and MD with McEnearney Associates in McLean. Reach the office at 703-790-9090.

Has all of this time at home finally given you that “time” you’ve been dreaming about?

I know I spent April, when I was home most, organizing every closet we had out of boredom. I’ve seen many posts around social media showing people doing the same — finally purging all of that stuff you never actually needed. I’ve also seen people wondering if donations are still being accepted during this time of COVID-19.

If you’re tackling a summer clean out, please consider donating your items to these organizations:

• Community Cares Vienna — Collecting food donations for food insecure families and coordinating efforts for clothing for families
• Buy Nothing Project: Give away things for free
• Share of McLean
• Unique Merrifield
• Goodwill in Fairfax
• Habitat for Humanity in Herndon
• Freecycle
• Vietnam Veterans of America — you can schedule an online pick up at your home. They especially need clothes in addition to household goods
• GreenDrop — They support National Federation of the Blind, Purple Heart, American Red Cross, and can provide you with a drop off location or scheduled a pick up at your home

Photo via Community Cares Vienna/Facebook

What started as a mom-led effort to help food-insecure families has grown into a large volunteer group giving groceries, kids’ clothing and more to roughly 150 people in the Vienna area each week.

Self-described bargain hunters Sharon McKew and Grace Westreich got to know each other through a yard sale site. They told Tysons Reporter via Facebook Messenger that they are leading the efforts behind the public Facebook group Community Cares Vienna.

“It started after schools shut down, and I found out many of the students I worked with would no longer receive the ‘blessings bags’ from the school,” McKew said. “It was just a way to continue to get them food.”

Westreich said the group “exploded overnight.” As of today (Wednesday), it has more than 300 members.

At first, the donations came from McKew’s wallet and former families from a daycare McKew ran. Then, Westreich started giving donations, and the two teamed up. Westreich now manages the money, orders, donation solicitations and delivery logistics, while McKew directs the volunteers and handles the food.

Over time, the group has turned into a space for people to share and solicit donations for items like bed rails, baby clothes, book bags, lined paper for students and more. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact vulnerable communities, it’s clear from the messages posted in the group that there’s an ongoing need for food and supplies.

A study earlier this year by Feeding America predicts that one in six adults — and one in four kids — could experience food insecurity this year. Jade Leedham with Second Story, a local nonprofit helping vulnerable kids and young, told Tysons Reporter in July that she’s seen a decrease in volunteers and corporate sponsors while the need for support continues.

Community Cares Vienna is working to keep residents and local businesses engaged. The group’s extensive reach is thanks to the “amazing volunteers,” McKew and Westreich said.

So far, volunteers’ efforts have included making masks for kids and adults, delivering disinfectants, buying school supplies and paying for art camps for homebound students, McKew said.

That’s not all. An anonymous donor donated their stimulus check. One mother-daughter duo dropped off boxes and bags filled with activities for kids. Several people organized neighborhood drives, while others consistently donate groceries. Girls Scouts and former daycare kids have prepared bags of food and teachers and staff from elementary schools are making deliveries.

The group also receives financial and marketing support from Lydia Russo, the local woman behind the Vienna VA Foodies Facebook group. People who want to get involved can email [email protected].

“Restaurants joined in, too,” Westreich said, highlighting local eateries that they made meals or donated:

• Inca Social
• Caboose Commons
• Foster’s Grille
• Mo:Mo House
• The Italian Gourmet
• Maple Ave Restaurant
• Nothing Bundt Cakes

“Sharon talks about kids waving from the window in excitement, the joy and sheer giddiness of knowing what the deliveries mean. Parents with tears of gratitude in their eyes,” Westreich said. “Sharon’s creed really has been, ‘No hungry bellies.'”

Photo by Maria Lin Kim/Unsplash

For the second year in a row, a local student wants people to support a 50-mile walk fundraising for World Vision International, a global Christian humanitarian organization.

Last year, Alex Covell and a group of James Madison High School students organized the first 50-mile walk, which raised $9,000 — almost double the $5,000 goal to benefit World Vision’s efforts to provide clean to people in developing communities, Covell said.

The World Health Organization estimates that 800,000 kids die each year due to diarrhea, which can be caused by unclean water.

“We were inspired to do this walk because of the staggering number of people who lack access to clean water, a resource us in the developed world don’t think twice about,” Covell said. “We are walking 50 miles because it takes on average $50 to get one more person lifelong access to clean water.”

Covell, who now attends Northern Virginia Community College, said that he came up with the idea for last year’s walk after he broke his wrist and was looking for something to do. “I probably had not walked more than 10 miles,” Covell noted.

So he decided to walk 50 miles from his family’s house to Baltimore, but no one wanted to join him.

Things changed when he saw the Vienna Presbyterian Church was hosting a 6K to support World Vision. “I really liked the cause,” Covell said. Working with the church’s missions team, Covell was able to find walkers for his 50-mile walk.

“We’ve shown that we can do it,” Covell said. “It’s been a little bit easier this year to get excited about it.”

This year’s walk will start at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 1. Walkers can expect six rest stops along the route.

Initially, Covell said he was aiming for 100 walkers, but cut his goal back to 20 due to safety precautions because of the pandemic. The roughly 20 students and young adults will walk 50 miles from the W&OD Trailhead in Purcellville to the National Mall in D.C. Covell said he expects they will reach D.C. around 9 p.m.

For people wondering what walking 50 miles is like, Covell said the joints start to ache and blisters pop up on the feet. “It was a really cool experience — a little bit painful,” Covell said.

While there wasn’t any group training last year, Covell said the team had two 20-mile walks recently to prepare.

As of today, the event has raised $9,700 of the $50,000 goal. “The reaction has been very positive,” Covell said. “As people are donating, oftentimes they leave messages that are encouraging.”

Like last year, the donations will support World Vision. “By walking, we are trying to help World Vision elevate this suffering,” Covell said. To date, World Vision has helped 3.2 million people get access to clean water, according to its website.

People who want to support the cause can donate, sign up to walk or volunteer to help on the day of the walk.

As two drive-in movie fundraisers gather donations for Second Story, the local nonprofit is reevaluating how to seek support as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

Based in the Merrifield area, Second Story helps kids, teens and young adults seeking food, shelter and emergency support.

Tysons Reporter caught up with Jade Leedham, Second Story’s vice president of development, to hear how the drive-in movie fundraisers happened, what fundraising looks like now and how their clients’ needs have changed during the pandemic.

Drive-in Movies 

Leedham said that both Tysons Corner Center and Capital One Center, which have been long-time supporters of Second Story, reached out about the drive-in movies.

Tysons Corner Center starts its series tonight (Friday) with movies on the second weekend of each month through September, while Capital One kicks off its four-week-long drive-in movies series tomorrow (Saturday). Both events are asking moviegoers to donate $25 to Second Story.

“It just kind of happened coincidentally at the same time from two of our main supporters here in Tysons,” she said.

Because Second Story is not co-planning the drive-in movies series, Leedham said it’s hard to predict what the donations might add up to.

“We don’t have any expectations, but we’ve seen some donations coming in,” she said. “For Capital One, I believe we passed $1,000 and there’s still a long time to go… I imagine it’s going to be a pretty sizable donation at the end.”

Leedham said that the donations will go toward supporting young people’s needs for food, safety items, toiletries and other essential items.

New Needs

Over the last few months, Leedham said she’s seen clients’ needs change. The nonprofit has had to significantly increase funds for rent support for participants in the program for homeless youth.

“That’s one big area that we’ve seen a hit,” Leedham said, noting that unemployment is impacting people’s ability to pay their rents.

Second Story has also shifted its asks for community support to gift cards and donations after seeing a decline in volunteers helping with things like food pick-up and drop-off and bringing in donations.

Leedham speculates that some corporate sponsors may now be seeing a loss in revenue or challenges with remote work, which could impact their contributions to Second Story.

“At the beginning, maybe they had enough to be able to do what they were able to do, but now they’ve got to start focusing on how to how to maintain their own businesses, which makes complete sense,” she said.

Even with fewer volunteers showing up in-person lately, Leedham says she’s still seeing a variety of support, from people starting online fundraisers to memorial donation drives.

“We had a teacher contact us recently because their colleague teacher passed away. They are doing a memorial donation drive because that teacher who passed away cared a lot about young people and especially homeless young people,” she said.

Some people were even able to donate personal protective equipment even when it was largely out of stock.

“I don’t know how they did it, but people were going out and looking for all of these essential items and bringing them to us. And so without that help, I don’t know how we would have been able to provide those things to our clients,” she said.

Sustaining Support

As Virginia rolls back COVID-19 restrictions and the start of the new school year approaches, Leedham said there are new, pressing concerns for people to grapple with.

“I just feel like the demand is just so high that it may be hard to keep up with the demand in terms of donating food,” she said.

To make sure people don’t forget about Second Story’s efforts, the nonprofit has increased its online marketing campaign and created a task force that alerts members of the organization’s immediate needs. Second Story’s podcast and newsletter also share how people’s support makes a big difference.

“We are trying to look for opportunities and help people to come up with fundraising ideas, while of course also relying on others to pitch ideas to us and just supporting them however we can with our materials and our branding and our videos and our messaging, so that they can represent Second Story in their own unique creative ways,” she said.

Second Story is also working toward a three-year fundraising goal that began last fiscal year. “As we go into the second half of the year here in 2020, we are doing our best and staying cautiously optimistic that we will have a great holiday season to sustain all of the things that we’re doing, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that COVID will have long term effects on everyone,” she said.

How People Can Help

Second Story is encouraging donors — if they have the capacity — to commit to the Beacon of Hope Society’s commitment to at least $1,000 per year for five years, Leedham said.

Leedham also hopes that people donating smaller amounts will be able to increase their contributions on a consistent basis.

There’s even a free way to help the nonprofit — by voting for Second Story on Apple Federal Credit Union’s list of four charities, Leedham said. The votes will determine how much each charity will receive from a pot of funding up to $100,000.

Owners and staff at Tysons-area restaurants have turned to fundraisers to help combat the financial hardships due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As of today, 15 GoFundMe fundraisers have raised a total of $236,110. Some of the fundraisers support employees, while others focus on the restaurants’ operations. Erica Hoffman, the co-owner of Galaxy Hut & Spacebar, created fundraisers for both staff and business operations.

The employee relief fund for Bottleneck Management, which operates now-closed City Works, raised the most out of the 15 fundraisers with more than $61,000.

Most of the fundraisers are still active, but a few, like the ones for Bear Branch Tavern in Vienna and Dogwood Tavern in Falls Church, are no longer accepting donations.

Tysons Reporter chronicled the local restaurant fundraisers that popped up on GoFundMe in March and April.

Here are the fundraisers — alphabetical by the restaurant names — still accepting donations:

• Agora (staff)
• Bottleneck Management/City Works (staff)
• Clare and Don’s Beach Shack (staff)
• Galaxy Hut & Spacebar (staff) and (business)
• Great American Restaurants (bartenders)
• Ireland’s Four Provinces (staff)
• Lost Dog Cafe in Tysons
• Loving Hut
• Pazzo Pomodoro
• Pulcinella
• Rocco’s
• Thomas Italian (staff)

Don’t see a restaurant’s fundraiser on the list? Email the link to [email protected] so we can add it.

Image via GoFundMe

A Vienna woman decided to take advantage of free time to help women around the D.C. area that are either suffering from homelessness or domestic violence while also supporting a regional Black-owned eatery.

Alexandra Sorrell, a recent Virginia Tech graduate, doesn’t start her new job until October and said she couldn’t stand the idea of sitting idly by while other people are in need. So Sorrell decided to organize a GoFundMe to purchase full-price meals from Puddin’ for women at both the Harriet Tubman Women’s Shelter and N Street Village facilities.

Both of these non-profits focus on helping women and children in the area by offering housing, counseling and advocacy, according to their websites.

“It’s hard to find things to fill your time and I felt so guilty sitting at home while so many people are suffering, especially now with the pandemic and Black Lives Matter,” she said.

Though Sorrell thought about assisting community members around Vienna, she recognized that there was a more immediate and extreme need in D.C.

One of Sorrell’s family friends is an emergency room nurse in a regional hospital and told her that they have seen record numbers of domestic violence and child abuse cases.

“I was trying to address as many areas of struggle as I could,” she said.

Puddin’, which is owned by Toyin Alli, serves Southern-style comfort food, according to the food truck’s website. Sorrell chose the truck from a recommendation of a staffer at N Street Village.

Sorrell told Tysons Reporter that she wanted to do more than provide canned food meals. Through Puddin’, she is able to connect recipients with meals they could enjoy.

She added that she wants to help replicate the joy that she feels when she is able to enjoy a nice meal with some friends.

As of this morning, the campaign has raised $1,760 out of $2,500. If the campaign doesn’t raise the full amount, Sorrell said she would donate the rest from the signing bonus from her new job.

The campaign will run through Aug. 1, according to the GoFundMe.

“My fear is to be ever complacent,” Sorrell said, adding that she hopes other people will assist with outreach and take advantage of free time to help others.

Photo via Puddin’/Facebook

After area hospitals began to see the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, Vienna company LaserShip decided to donate its services to help deliver personal protective equipment and other necessities to several Inova locations.

For medical workers, PPE can save lives by limiting the contact healthcare professionals have with people who might be carrying COVID-19. Josh Dinneen, LaserShip’s VP of Commercial Development, said the company decided early on in the pandemic to help deliver this equipment at no cost to the medical centers.

“We are just managing it, getting it where it needs to go for them,” Dinneen said. “Whatever we can do to leverage what we have in our resources, we need to do it in this time of crisis.”

As a “last-mile delivery service,” the majority of LaserShip’s business comes from medical supply and e-commerce, Dinneen said, adding that it made sense for them to help community members in need.

During this three-month partnership, which will likely be renewed in July, Dinneen said the company has delivered life-saving supply to three Inova Hospitals and 10 additional affiliated medical centers  — including Inova Alexandria, Inova Fair Oaks and Inova Fairfax hospitals. 

“What’s good for the community now will be good for us in the long-run,” he said.

Dinneen said the company chose to affiliate with Inova because they have coordinated on things like blood drives before.

Though LaserShip began with shipments to hospitals and medical centers nearly every daily when the partnership first began in April, Dinneen said that demand has lessened somewhat, and now they are only sending drivers out once or twice a week.

Going forward, LaserShip will also be helping Food For Others, a Merrifield based organization that helps community members facing food insecurity.

“We’ve offered to come in and do some logistics advice,” he said, adding that the company is also helping the organization with food delivery.

Photo courtesy LaserShip

On Friday, local Lions clubs donated nearly $20,000 to Merrifield-based Food for Others.

The Fairfax Lions Clubs, along with several other local clubs and the Lions of Virginia Foundation (LOVF), raised $19,525 to support Food for Others’ mobile food program for people impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, according to Food for Others and the Fairfax Lions Club.

“LOVF matched donations of individual Lions clubs,” the press release said.

The contributing clubs included:

• Fairfax Lions
• Falls Church-Annandale Lions
• Burke Lions
• Springfield Global Lions
• Clifton Lions
• Alexandria Asian-American Lions

“It is deeply gratifying how the various Fairfax area Lions Clubs quickly teamed together and partnered with LOVF to contribute this money to put help put food on the table and provide some comfort to our neighbors in need in these hard times,” Mike Rumberg, the president of the Fairfax Lions Club, said.

Food for Others’ mobile food program delivers emergency food to people who can’t get food from distribution centers, according to a press release.

People who want to support Food for Others can donate items like canned chili, canned chicken, rice, pasta sauce and canned fruit; start a vegetable or herb garden to grow produce; and spread the word about Food for Others’ efforts.

Photo via Food for Others/Facebook

A 5K in the Town of Vienna raised more than $10,000 to help people facing food insecurity.

Hosted by Caffe Amouri and the Vienna Business Association (VBA), the “Feeding Families 5K” let people run or walk a route winding through the town during the month of May.

The VBA posted on Facebook that the race raised $10,289.

Small businesses, including Caboose Tavern, Grass Roots Fitness and PizzaRoni, provided more than 70 prizes and donated thousands of dollars to the race, according to the post.

“We also received thousands in donations from Vienna citizens, and had over 260 people participate in the run/walk!” the post said. All of the donations from the race are going to support local families facing food insecurity.

The race had four award categories: fastest time running or walking (under 60) and fastest time walking or running. Additionally, 67 prizes were awarded to people in a random drawing, the post said.

“We have such and amazing community and the generosity that has spilled out into various avenues of help during these trying times is just beautiful!” the post said.

While the race is over, people can still donate to the efforts to fight food insecurity by either contacting the Vienna VA Foodies Facebook Group or choosing the option to purchase grocery packs for families from Caboose Brewing. People can email Lydia Russo at [email protected] for more information.

Image via Caffe Amouri/Facebook

The Tysons area will have three blood drives this month via a partnership with local volunteer fire departments and Inova Blood Donor Services.

Fairfax County Fire and Rescue announced today (Tuesday) four upcoming blood drives that will take place in the parking lots of the fire stations.

“Due to current events, blood supplies in Fairfax County and the nation are at dangerously low levels and dropping,” according to the fire department.

Here are the Tysons-area ones:

• Thursday (June 18) noon-6 p.m. at Station 13 in Dunn Loring (2148 Gallows Road)
• Wednesday (June 24) 1-7 p.m. at Station 1 in McLean (1455 Laughlin Ave)
• Thursday (June 25) 1-7 p.m. at Station 2 in Vienna (400 Center Street S.)

There will also be a blood drive at Station 5 (6300 Beulah Street) in Alexandria on Thursday (June 18) from 1-7 p.m. People can register on the Inova Blood Donor Services website.

Fairfax County Fire and Rescue noted how the blood drives will address safety concerns with COVID-19.

“There will be plenty of space to spread out and use appropriate social distancing,” the post said. “To help protect our firefighters and paramedics, access to the fire station is prohibited.”

Photo via Facebook