How Can a Team of Students Help NYC’s Restaurants?

As college commencement season gets underway, the Class of 2020 is grappling with an acute sense of loss. For one Harvard senior however, it’s more than that. Our co-founder Isabella Di Pietro withdrew from college weeks shy of graduation to focus on saving her family’s restaurant business by feeding those on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What many don’t know about Feed the Frontlines NYC is that we are a primarily student-run team. Led by Isabella, many of us on the team are high school teammates and college roommates. Abruptly departing from college amidst the outbreak in March motivated us to bring our skills and ideas from campus to our home communities. As an organization born from family and college connections, we are grateful to the students and alumni who have joined the team, started their own sister initiatives, and rallied around the cause.

Since leaving college, our team members have become competent fundraisers, partnership directors, social media managers, and web designers. As Isabella told The Harvard Gazette, “[Starting Feed the Frontlines] has been a bit of a reaffirmation of a lot of my amazing friendships that I’ve made at Harvard, because my friends have been willing to step up and help with this right away. I think that a lot of people are struggling to find meaning and motivation for their schoolwork, so this is a really welcome outlet for some people to be able to make a difference in this crisis.” 

You can read the full piece about Feed the Frontlines NYC and other student-led COVID-19 relief initiatives in The Harvard Gazette. Isabella also wrote an op-ed about starting Feed the Frontlines NYC published in the New York Daily News.