Meet the Team Behind: Heart of Dinner

Heart of Dinner fights food insecurity and loneliness for Asian American older adults in under-resourced communities—delivering culturally meaningful meals and care with handcrafted notes and connection. Learn more here! 

Can you tell me about the need for your work? 

Asian American older adults face some of the highest poverty and isolation rates in our communities. Many live in significantly under-resourced neighborhoods, historically overlooked and without access to foundational resources like food. We focus on Asian American elders facing no-to-low income, language barriers, mobility challenges, and limited access to food. Many live alone, have no family, and have few visitors during the week. For too many, survival means choosing between food, rent, or medication.

What does a care package entail? 

Every Wednesday, we deliver hand‑decorated care packages with about three days of culturally comforting meals, fresh produce, and a handwritten love note. We support local restaurants, food distributors, farms, and markets by purchasing prepared lunchboxes and cases of Asian heritage crops to fill our care packages. We consider each elder's cultural background and health, ensuring that every meal feels like home. We think about what our grandparents loved to eat, and what helps us feel nourished in our body and spirit. About 800 elders across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx receive our care packages each week, reminding them that they are loved and seen by their community. 

How does your work connect individuals and combat loneliness? 

We rally kind individuals to volunteer their time and creativity by handwriting notes in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Tagalong, Vietnamese, and more. They also decorate the food bags to nurture emotional connection with our elders, who often collect and display the bags in their homes. It’s a community effort that sparks love across generations and cultures. Volunteers often share that this practice stirs up memories of their own grandparents and eases their own loneliness, finding meaning in connecting with elders they may never meet.

What work do you do outside of providing care packages? 

All surplus food purchased for our Elders' care packages and volunteer meals is shared with neighborhood community fridges and local food pantries. In times of crisis, we extend our model through short-term emergency relief. In 2025, we drove door-to-door across Los Angeles, delivering over 1,000 care packages to elders displaced by wildfires, living in temporary housing, or already unhoused and afraid to leave home. In November, we launched emergency relief for elderly tenants in Chinatown, NYC who lost SNAP benefits and were forced to choose between food or rent. These relief efforts are time-limited and layered on top of weekly deliveries.