Cheri Coit stood on the side of the road in Pine Valley on Sunday selling tacos and tamales to raise funds for the Naomi Project, one tortilla at a time.
“Normally, I’m the overseeing pastor of two houses for single women in Bonita and Chula Vista,” Coit says.
The Naomi Project provides temporary homes for women and children who have been affected by abuse and are transitioning out of a crisis situation.
Currently they are unable to hold large scale fundraisers due to state and county-issued directives for physical distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Day pastor at the safe houses, Coit is also chief operating officer of the organization, ultimately responsible for fundraising, event coordination and budgeting.
Additionally, as the owner of Chef Chelynn’s Hen House Meal Prep, Coit decided to dedicate weekends to raising funds for the Naomi Project, one taco at a time.
She puts no price on the food at the taco stand, instead asking for donations. With each customer, she suggests something a little different: a yolked tamale, the rice and bean casserole, rough-cut salsa.
She also mentions the web page where donations can be made at naomiprojectinc.org and tells customers she considers her taco stand to be a form of ministry she can bring to the community.
“There’s so much need and this is the most I can do with everything closed,” Coit said while flipping corn tortillas on the makeshift camp stove.
Although a street taco stand can’t make up for the usual fundraisers, it is doing something, she said.
“This little fundraiser has done miraculous things. To bring in $500 in donations is amazing in its own way.”
She estimates more families are struggling with violence in the home but said it is harder than ever to bring in income for the organization without the ability to organize the large fundraisers of years past.
“My phone’s ringing off the hook and we’re all of us, Jewish Family Services, the YWCA, all of us are saying the same things. We need to get these ladies into a safe home but resources are stretched so thin right now that we’re all struggling,” Coit said.
Between customers, Coit explains she had plans in place to open up a safe house in rural Pine Valley before the pandemic reached San Diego County and the 2020 vision was placed on hold.
“It would have been perfect, right here in the mountains, safe, away from everything, a fresh start in a small town,” Coit said with a sad smile.
Normally, she says, the group coordinates with the county to provide shelter and works with Social Services programs to ensure residents have two months of rent secured, as well as figuring out how to cover costs for individual situations.
Her eyes twinkle as she describes a recent win: finding everything she needed for a single mother leaving an abusive situation along with her autistic son.
“We had to house her, clothe her, I mean she needed everything because she left so quickly, she had nothing with her but the clothes they were wearing when they left, but we did it. We got it all,” Coit said.
Wiping down her workspace with sanitizer, she says the pandemic can’t stop her from helping people. “My heart is for the broken, especially women with kids, because at one time my heart was kind of broken.”
She holds up her hands and wrinkles her nose at them before changing into fresh gloves.
“You gotta adapt, right?”
