GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Jacob Prell has worked in the West Michigan service industry, so he understands the pain unemployed or furloughed workers are feeling.
"They're hurting bad. They haven't seen an unemployment check, they haven't seen a stimulus check, half of them haven't even seen their tax check," says Prell.
Those service workers represent a significant portion of the 16 million Americans who have filed for unemployment in recent weeks. That's just one of the reasons Prell and others formed the group Grand Rapids Service Industry Network Donations.
"We grabbed a bunch of out of work service industry people, like cooks and waitresses and bartenders," says Prell.
From there Prell's group knew that many of the closed restaurants had excess food.
"We started canvassing the restaurants that closed down and collected all the food that was going to go to waste," says Prell.
These are just some of the donations that are then boxed and delivered to laid off workers and their families.
"So far we've fed 4,000 people; that's grouped into families but individually we've got to about 4,000 people and we're working toward 5,000," says Prell.
And even with that success the group says they are not planning on stopping anytime soon.
"We're going to keep going and we've got some bigger distributors we're trying to work with like the United Way," says Prell.
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