Mosque gives food as Ramadan ends.

Asif Shahzad’s volunteer staff set out with a stack of flyers for the apartment complexes near the Bait-us-Samee Mosque in Houston’s Northside neighborhood on Friday, hopeful they would convince a few of the families to come to their food distribution the next day.

But as the sun beat down on the worship center’s parking lot on Saturday morning, it was more than just a few folks who had showed up for the drive-thru.

The Houston chapter of Humanity First, an international aid organization, handed out 23,000 pounds of food in less than two hours to more than 600 families who drove to the mosque for food aid, said Shahzad, the chapter’s coordinator.

“When we told them we were having this,” Shahzad said of the local community, “they said, ‘We’ll come, and can we bring some other families along?’ The need is so big that people are kind of desperate.”

The line of cars waiting for food snaked down Spears Road.

Volunteers dropped off bags and boxes filled with fresh fruit, vegetables, dried pasta and canned goods into hundreds of car trunks and truck beds, waving their gloved hands at the drivers and passengers inside the vehicles in a show of social distancing.

As the novel coronavirus pandemic instigated a nationwide economic shutdown, more than 2 million Texans have lost their jobs as companies laid off and furloughed staff. Many turned to food assistance pantries and filed for unemployment to survive.

“How are you?” U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee called into the passenger seat of a red hatchback as she dropped a Houston Food Bank box off in the back.

Jackson Lee, who joined Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez in distributing produce and nonperishable goods to needy Houstonians on Saturday, called the help a “lifeline” for families in need.

She pulled two pale blue surgical masks out of a plastic bag. “God bless,” she said, handing them through the passenger window.

Saturday’s donation drive-thru also fell on Eid, the last day of holy month of Ramadan for the Muslim community. The 45 volunteers had been fasting since dawn and were handing out food in humid 90 degree weather.

“Ramadan is also to connect to God, do good things and sacrifice,” Shahzad said. “This was a big sacrifice they all did.”

The organization plans to host a food distribution every other week, according to Humanity First public affairs secretary Nasir Malik.

To date, it has helped with nearly a dozen drive-thru distributions with donations from the Houston Food Bank and other community partners, Malik said.

“Whenever you see those faces and see how happy they are to receive this food, it’s unexplainable,” Shahzad said.