About Get Shift Done El Paso:
Get Shift Done for El Paso hires unemployed hospitality workers to perform paid shift work — at $10 an hour — at the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger food bank. So far, Get Shift Done for El Paso has around 2,000 people registered who have worked over 60,000 hours.
“The Get Shift Done initiative first began with the idea that the program would be a short-term relief effort during the pandemic crisis, but there was a much greater need and will continue at least through the end of the year,” said Patrick Brandt, Co-Founder of Get Shift Done and President of Shiftsmart.
Get Shift Done for El Paso is a partnership between the El Paso Community Foundation, Bank of America, Albertsons, Cardwell Foundation, Prudential Financial, United Way of El Paso County, El Paso Electric, ONE Gas Foundation, TFCU, GECU, the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank and other local food supply organizations. Get Shift Done originated in the Dallas area. El Paso was its second location. It is now in 11 cities, including Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Little Rock, Arkansas, Austin and Houston.
“We are grateful for the continued support in the El Paso community allowing the initiative to provide a temporary solution to the unemployment spike and provide additional hunger relief in the area,” said Anurag Jain, Co-Founder of Get Shift Done, Chairman of Access Healthcare, an initial financial support, and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of North Texas Food Bank.
The food service industry is among the hardest hit in El Paso. About 7,300 hospitality workers in El Paso were unemployed as of July 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a nearly 20 percent unemployment increase compared to July 2019.
“When we began working with Get Shift Done we hoped it would be a short-term solution to provide supplemental income to El Paso’s displaced hospitality workers while adding extra support to provide meals to families in need,” said Eric Pearson, President and CEO of the El Paso Community Foundation. “What we’ve seen is the continued need to provide work opportunities along with meeting the demand for food is not slowing down.”
The El Paso Community Foundation continues to accept donations in an effort to expand its offerings to workers and provide more support sorting, packing and distributing food to the community.
“We still need workers to help us pack, distribute and prepare boxes of food for our community,” said Susan Goodell, CEO of the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank. “The Get Shift Done initiative has been a much-needed source to help us process food and get it to the tables of those in need. With their help, we have been able to have more food ready for distribution and we are incredibly grateful.”
For more information or to support this fund, go togetshiftdone.org/elpasoorgetshiftdone.org.