+
Capital One Impact Initiative

The food industry has been hit hard by the pandemic. This initiative is helping workers get back on their feet.

The food industry has been hit hard by the pandemic. This initiative is helping workers get back on their feet.
Get Shift Done
True

Shkoryah Carthen has spent half of her life working in the service industry. While the 32-year old restaurant worker quickly sensed that Covid-19 would bring real change to her daily life, Carthen hardly knew just how strongly it would impact her livelihood.

"The biggest challenge for me during this time, honestly is just to stay afloat," Carthen said.

Upon learning the Dallas restaurant she worked for would close indefinitely, Carthen feared its doors may never reopen.

Soon after, Carthen learned that The Wilkinson Center was desperately looking for workers to create and distribute meals for those in need in their community. The next day, Carthen was at the food pantry restocking shelves and creating relief boxes filled with essentials like canned foods, baby formula and cleaning products. In addition to feeding families throughout the area, this work ensured Carthen the opportunity to provide food for her own.


"The food banks also offer to help the workers out with food if we need it, and a lot of us do," Carthen said.

Her new job was created by Get Shift Done, an initiative launched by Dallas business and community leaders Anurag Jain and Patrick Brandt with the support of their respective companies, community leaders, restaurant owners and nonprofit organizations. Get Shift Done provides food and service industry workers in need of supplemental income with jobs at food banks and other nonprofits.

Courtesy of Get Shift Done

Even before many restaurants were mandated to shut down, Jain and Brandt considered the imminent impact of diminished work opportunities for hospitality workers. This uncertainty in the industry prompted them to fill the gap and connect those in the service industry to non-profits that need help — especially as a growing demand for services moved against a shrinking pool of available volunteers.

While the pandemic hit the livelihoods of hospitality workers especially hard, they quickly became essential workers — assisting the food banks, pantries and schools in need."60% of Americans have less than two weeks' worth of savings," Brandt said. "So if you think about somebody that's lost their job in this environment, there's a likelihood that losing their job could put themselves into food insecurity. Pre-Covid, one in six Americans were already facing food insecurity. We're working to mitigate that rise."

While Brandt initially expected the company to provide temporary relief for 10 to 12 weeks, Get Shift Done has grown from a North Texas startup to national relief organization — assisting 11 cities with more than 11,000 workers registered.

"We've provided over 18 million meals," Brandt said. "I've never been a part of something that's scaled quite like this."

This rapid growth has brought far-reaching assistance with funding from partners like Capital One. The financial institution has committed 50 million dollars to support communities during the pandemic and as part of its investment, Capital One has equipped Get Shift Done with the funding and social capital needed to turn a startup into an organization feeding communities throughout America. Support for the work started in North Texas, but Capital One's partnership quickly expanded this initiative nationally into 10 additional markets including Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Austin and beyond.

Courtesy of Get Shift Done

"Capital One has been an incredible partner in providing not only financial support but insight and connections to markets across the country, allowing us to grow nationally and offer a critical service for communities who desperately need it," said Brandt.

Jain added, "It is a beautiful model of partners coming together to create something bigger and more impactful than we would have dreamed possible."

This assistance will help Get Shift Done continue to impact communities on a large scale even as life during the pandemic becomes the new normal.

"At Capital One, we are focused on swiftly addressing the evolving needs of our communities and supporting those impacted by COVID-19," Andy Navarrete, head of external affairs at Capital One, said. "As a national partner of Get Shift Done, we see power in their workforce development model, and believe harnessing such ingenuity will be what gets us through our collective recovery."

For Shkoryah Carthen, all that matters is that she's helping her community adjust as she helps herself. "I've been told by several different food banks that we have been a blessing," Carthen said.

Joy

Sorry, Labradors. After 31 years, America has a new favorite dog.

The American Kennel Club has crowned a new favorite.

via Pixabay

A sad-looking Labrador Retriever

The sweet-faced, loveable Labrador Retriever is no longer America’s favorite dog breed. The breed best known for having a heart of gold has been replaced by the smaller, more urban-friendly French Bulldog.

According to the American Kennel Club, for the past 31 years, the Labrador Retriever was America’s favorite dog, but it was eclipsed in 2022 by the Frenchie. The rankings are based on nearly 716,500 dogs newly registered in 2022, of which about 1 in 7 were Frenchies. Around 108,000 French Bulldogs were recorded in the U.S. in 2022, surpassing Labrador Retrievers by over 21,000.

Keep ReadingShow less
Family

Pediatrician shares two simple tips that could save a child's life at a pool party

"The more folks present, the safer the pool is, right? Wrong."

Photo by Ash Dowie on Unsplash

If there's a body of water anywhere, a designated adult needs to have their eyes on it.

It's that time of year when the weather across the country is warm enough for families to enjoy outdoor barbecues, picnics and pool parties. That means it's also the time of year when tragedy will strike a certain percentage of families who get blindsided by how quickly and easily a child can drown in a backyard pool, even when they're surrounded by people who care about them and their safety.

We've all been at a gathering where adults are coming and going, chatting, setting up food, taking trips to the bathroom, all while kids are busy playing in the water. In such scenarios, it's easy to assume that someone else is keeping an eye on the pool.

But as pediatrician Diane Arnaout has shared, the harrowing reality is that the more people there are at a pool party the more likely it is that a child could slip into the pool or become distressed in the water without anyone noticing.

In a Facebook post that has been shared more than 77,000 times, Dr. Arnaout wrote:

Keep ReadingShow less

Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

Drew Barrymore, 48, has been in the public consciousness since she starred as Gertie in 1982’s mega-blockbuster, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So, it makes sense that many people of a certain age feel as if they’ve grown up with her.

Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS.

On May 25, the show’s Instagram page posted a touching video of an off-the-cuff moment between Barrymore and a fan during a taping of her show. In the clip, Barrymore realizes that someone in the audience is crying. So, instead of ignoring the fan, she jumps to action to see what is the matter.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Musician uses traditional Chinese instrument to create hypnotic cover of 'Hotel California'

There are literally hundreds of covers of this song floating around on the internet, but this one has its own unique flair.

Moyun/Youtube

Moyun peforms "Hotel California" on the guzheng.

The Eagles' hit song, “Hotel California,” has been covered countless times over the years by a variety of artists, including the likes of Nancy Sinatra, the Gypsy Kings and that guy at your local karaoke spot.

And while every rendition gives the song a fresh dynamic, one musician with a penchant for mystery has transformed the rock n’ roll staple into something entirely new.

Using a traditional Chinese string instrument called a guzheng, Moyun plays the song focusing mostly on its two guitar solo arrangements, creating a sound that has all the otherworldly beauty of an ancient folk tale.
Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Man rewatches shows from his childhood and his recaps of the bonkers storylines are priceless

Rob Anderson's hilarious recaps of shows like "Mighty Ducks," "Beethoven," and "7th Heaven" might make you wonder how they got made in the first place.

@hearthrobert/TikTok

These plots makes zero sense.

While there are no doubt some timeless classics from our childhood that remain every bit as amazing as we remember, many are straight-up cringey upon a later viewing. Really, it’s to be expected as societal viewpoints change…sort of a marker of how far we’ve collectively come.

And so, what do we do with these problematic pieces of old-school pop culture? Well, we can certainly update them to better reflect a more modern attitude, but that also comes with a set of potential problems. Or we could simply never watch them again. Certainly an option given all the content out there. But then we might miss an opportunity to better understand what seemed to work for the mainstream then, and why it doesn’t work now.

And then there’s the third option—allow ourselves to be entertained by their cringiness.

That’s certainly the route taken by Rob Anderson. Over on TikTok, Anderson has taken ultra-popular movies and television shows from his childhood and given them hilarious recaps capturing how absurd some of the storylines are.
Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Woman decides that she is the love of her life and marries herself at her retirement home

“I said, you know what, I’ve done everything else. Why not?”

77-year-old woman decides she's the love of her life and marries herself.

We joke about marrying ourselves or a platonic friend if some arbitrary amount of time has passed without a proposal from an imaginary suitor. And sure, some people do wind up marrying a friend in more of a business arrangement, but it's not very common that someone follows through with marrying themselves.

Dorothy "Dottie" Fideli, decided that she was going to break the mold. The 77-year-old sat down and thought about all of the things she had done in life and who was with her the entire time cheering her on. It was an easy answer: herself. She was her biggest cheerleader, the person who always showed up and the love of her life, so Fideli made the plan to marry herself.

On a beautiful May day, friends and family gathered in the O’Bannon Terrace Retirement Community, where Fideli is a resident, to witness the ceremony.

Keep ReadingShow less