Easter Outreach: A 15-Year Journey of Feeding Philadelphia and Celebrating the Resurrection

I’m Vito Baldini, a pastor with Liberti churches and the founder and executive director of Small Things Inc. I’d like to introduce you to Easter Outreach – a celebration of the Resurrection that has provided hundreds of thousands of meals to Philadelphians over the last 15+ years.

Easter Outreach was started by Liberti Church Riverwards in 2010 when the leaders realized their church resided in one of the hungriest zip codes in the country. Their vision was simply to celebrate the resurrection by connecting with their neighbors and sharing an Easter meal.

 As Easter outreach continued to grow through the years, one thing became clear:

We needed more churches to be mobilized.

We needed churches across Philadelphia to work together to connect with their neighbors. Every year, the project grew. More churches got involved, more meals were provided, and more people were getting connected.

By 2019, we had 90 churches involved, and over 40,000 meals were distributed across the region. Imagine the celebration of diversity represented by the local church! People were connected to food, to the Church, and, in turn, to Jesus himself.

Then, in 2020, just as I began to plan that year’s Easter Outreach, the global pandemic hit. I came to a crossroads. Do I shut down Easter Outreach or leverage 10 years of relationships to serve the region? The answer was clear, as God had already developed a regional network of food distributors through the local church.

At this point, Easter Outreach grew into a full-time food distribution system that is now called Small Things, which distributes food six days a week. Over the last four years, Small Things has developed a much broader vision of using food to alleviate poverty. We’ve now given away more than 24 million pounds of food. And we still manage Easter Outreach for a network of churches.

This year, Easter Outreach has a new food partner: Convoy of Hope. Working with Convoy of Hope and our church partners, Easter Outreach will spark 40 Resurrection Celebrations across the city. These celebrations point to the good news of Jesus. They are community events that include meals, groceries, activities for kids, and prayer. What a great way for the church to be known in the community and to connect with their neighbors in a practical, tangible way. It’s the perfect picture of our guiding words:

“Easter Outreach celebrates the resurrection, connecting churches with their neighbors by sharing a meal.”

During the next few weeks, I’d like to walk through the mission of Easter Outreach. We will look at the biblical and theological reasons why we should work together, celebrate the resurrection, connect to our neighbors, and why sharing a meal can be transformative.