This nonprofit gives back and delivers groceries to seniors in Sacramento and beyond

Older adults are more susceptible and at higher risk to severe illness from the coronavirus. This makes some seniors more hesitant in doing essential activities as simple as shopping for groceries, in fear of being exposed to COVID-19.

To fill the gap, a community organization has been providing support to the elderly and those with serious underlying medical conditions in Sacramento and Yuba City.

SEVA Selfless Service, a nonprofit organization founded in 2012 that focuses on food donations and disaster relief work, has been stepping up. Seva is a Sanskrit word that means “selfless service”, or work performed without any thought of reward or personal benefit.

SEVA’s volunteers were concerned about seniors who are fearful of going out to shop, even before some stores began offering special hours for the elderly, said Bhupinder Singh Kooner, a co-founder of the organization. Deciding to help through buying and delivering groceries to their doors, the group put the word out on Facebook and has since then received substantial responses from communities who need, Kooner said.

Since March, around two dozen SEVA volunteers, all of them with full-time jobs, have been delivering groceries to around 10 senior citizens per day in Sacramento and Yuba City. With yearly donations raised entirely from the community, the volunteers will pick up groceries and sometimes prescriptions ordered by the seniors, then drop off the items at their doors without making contact.

“Most of us are under age 40, so we can get out in the public and help those who can’t right now,” Kooner said.

Aside from individual orders, SEVA volunteers also deliver 200 boxes of prepackaged groceries per week from food banks for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s coronavirus food assistance program. There were days when volunteers did as many as 96 deliveries, Kooner said.

SEVA also volunteered to deliver hot meals to support an iniative of the Capital Sikh Center in Sacramento. As many restaurants and truck stops have been closed, the Capital Sikh Center offers simple hot meals – red beans with chili peppers and rice – packaged and delivered to truck drivers and elderly in need. Kooner and other volunteers reached out to offer more manpower to make deliveries so they can cover more areas, said Gurtej S. Cheema, spokesperson of the Capital Sikh Center and professor of internal medicine at UC Davis Medical Center.

Cheema said it is important to treat your neighbors in need as family.

“Their pain will become my pain; their need will become our needs,” he said. “The older people took care of us when we were younger, even though they (the ones we served) may not (only be) our parents. Even if there is only one person hoping we could deliver meals for them, we will still continue.”

SEVA has no affiliation with religion, no agenda and is entirely volunteer-driven, Kooner said. The organization began giving back for the love of this country, which provides opportunities to its melting pot of Americans and immigrants, he added.

“When you get into the agenda-based stuff, you start to divide,” Kooner said. ”But one thing we can agree on is we are all Americans. We are doing this because this is what Americans do.”

In addition to delivering groceries, the organization runs regular meal services weekly in Sacramento and monthly San Francisco, serving around 1,300 people.

Every Thursday evening over the past eight years, volunteers would set up a table with pizza, bananas and drinks serving community members on Bannon Street in Sacramento.

Jaskarn Johal, another co-founder of SEVA and a Sacramento resident, admitted it was scary at first to go out and potentially be closer to people – two things the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended against. Johal recalled an episode when the police came to one of their regular meal services at the Civic Center plaza in San Francisco, telling them to leave as police thought they were creating a mass gathering, which could contribute to the spread of COVID-19. To continue SEVA’s work that day, the volunteers dropped off 500 boxes of food on sidewalks.

As precautionary measures, volunteers wear masks and gloves and pack the food into plastic containers for people to collect while maintaining social distance during meal services, Johal said.

Stepping up in times of COVID-19 is the right thing to do, according to Johal, especially for healthy people who have resources to share.

“You should always be looking to help those who don’t have it and spread it out,” he said.

As a full-time pharmacist, Johal said it has been nonstop since the COVID-19 outbreak, but everyone is pitching in to make it work.

“The teamwork makes the dream work,” he said. “Now is important for our country to unite more than ever, to take care of your neighbor. Everybody should be doing to look out for each other.

“If somebody feel like they should not go out of the house, make sure you are supporting organizations to support them, so we can continue this work.”

To seek help for grocery deliveries or to volunteer, contact Bhupinder Kooner at 916-516-4969, Jaskarn Johal at 530-218-1545 or Daman Bhangu at 530-315-1406.

This story was originally published April 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM.