For twenty years, most of what Joi’s Angels does has happened in rooms only our neighbors see. A pantry line on a Saturday morning in East Orange. A truck pulling up outside an empty apartment. In March, a national daytime audience got a look at it.
Sherri Shepherd invited Joi Smith onto the show during Women’s History Month — and, as it turned out, on her birthday. What Joi did not know was that the people she has spent two decades serving had something to say back.
One by one, in a tribute video played during the segment, they told her. Neighbors who came to a pantry when there was nothing left in the cupboard. Families who walked into an empty apartment and walked back out of it into a home. Mothers who got through a holiday because somebody made sure their children had something to open. People whose lives changed because a woman in East Orange decided that need would be the only requirement.
Joi has never been comfortable being the story. She would rather be at the warehouse. But there is something worth sitting with in watching a person hear, all at once and out loud, what twenty years of quiet work actually added up to.
That is what Joi’s Angels is — not an organization so much as a long accumulation of ordinary mornings, and the people who show up for them.
If you found us through the show and have been meaning to get involved, the door is open. You can volunteer, give, or come to a pantry and see what a Saturday looks like.
Watch the full segment below, including the tribute from the community Joi has served.