Lillia Callum-Penso

Read more about the Covid-19 Oral History Project here on the Southern Foodways Alliance website. Find the full transcription of my interview with Lillia Callum-Penso of The Post and Courier Greenville in the SFA archive.

TRANSCRIPT

Lillia Callum-Penso: I’m still pushing the issues a little bit, not necessarily around protests, but in a broader sense, like what is the role restaurants play in the broader good of community? So, for instance—because they did get a lot of support, and restaurants here got PPP money and the EIDL loans, and one thing that really helped a number of restaurants here was CARES Act money that went towards feeding the community, so we had several different instances where money—I think there were two different organizations that each got—I want to say $500,000 of CARES Act funds to funnel to local restaurants to make meals that were then picked up and delivered to nonprofits to feed people in need. And, of course, food insecurity has grown, hunger has grown, especially among children without, you know—and so I just thought—to me, I thought—I loved seeing that. I loved seeing that action. You know, it helped restaurants, it helped the community, and what struck me is that it happened so fast. People were able to pull that together so fast, and I’m like, “Oh, my god. So there’s now this infrastructure in place, like you know how this can be done.”