Best of 2020: ‘How Am I Going to Feed People?’
When restaurants and shops across North Texas closed last spring when the pandemic hit, Preston Hollow’s Anurag Jain had one prevailing thought.
“‘How am I going to feed people?’ was my immediate concern,” he said, adding that his involvement with the North Texas Food Bank made him keenly aware of how hard it was about to become for a lot of people.
What ensued was a collaboration between Jain and Patrick Brandt of Shiftsmart, to come up with a solution to twin issues – an increased need for the services many nonprofits like the NTFB provided, and a lack of volunteer availability because of COVID-19.
The result was Get Shift Done, which provided many suddenly unemployed with an income in exchange for working for those nonprofits.
“This pandemic crisis has brought out so many heroes – people who just saw a need and filled it,” said People Newspapers deputy editor Bethany Erickson of this Best of 2020 pick. “Get Shift Done is one of those efforts that was like capturing much-needed lightning in a very empty bottle, and a time when we needed the light the most.”
