Meet Daniela Morales: Small Things' New Emmanuel Market Coordinator

By joining Small Things as the Emmanuel Market Coordinator, Daniela Morales has stepped into a role that brings her face-to-face with one of Philadelphia's most immediate needs: access to food.

Each Saturday, the food market at Emmanuel (123 S 17th Street) serves those experiencing food insecurity, homelessness, housing instability, and other challenges that can make day-to-day life difficult.

Although the role and its focus are new to Morales, it’s far from her first role in service to the community.

A Career Rooted in Community Service

“I’ve been with nonprofits since 2021,” Morales said. “That’s been my passion—nonprofit work, just doing things of service, working with people… makes me feel like something’s happening.”

In addition to her role as Market Coordinator, Morales works full-time as a family advocate with Maternity Care Coalition, where she connects clients (all of whom are pregnant or new parents) to the services they need. Before that, she worked as a program manager with Mighty Writers, another Philadelphia nonprofit, which provides afterschool writing and literacy programs to children and community programs for families.

A New Focus on Food Stability

At Small Things, Morales is familiarizing herself with a different form of community outreach: food stability.

“I wanted to meet a different group of people, work in a different way,” Morales said. “Now I’m learning about food pantry needs, how it works… I feel like it’s helping me see the big picture, and how nonprofits work.”

In her experience, the needs that nonprofits address are rarely separate from one another. Whether it's education, housing, family stability, language access, employment, or food security, they’re all pieces of a whole and connected.

“If you aren’t eating, you can’t focus in school,” Morales said. “And if you can’t focus in school, you can’t learn, and if you can’t learn, you’re not going to be able to communicate your needs, and we’re right back at square one.”

In 2025, Small Things’ Emmanuel market provided nearly 31,000 meals to more than 3,600 individuals, many of whom were repeat visitors. For Morales, those individuals are the heart of the job.

Meeting People Where They Are

“It’s been an adjustment for me since starting, because I've worked with purely families, and here I'm working with individuals,” she said. “They each have their own story.”

Morales does not assume she knows an individual’s story when they come to Emmanuel on a Saturday morning for a meal, but she knows it is a benefit to those who could use it.

“That’s been the best experience here,” she said. “Just putting my own ideas of what I thought people would be like away, and just meeting people where they are today.”

The same has been true of the volunteers. Every week, our Emmanuel program takes in 40–50 volunteers who help prepare hot meals, stock the pantry, serve guests, wash dishes, and assist guests in shopping the food pantry. Morales said she has been struck by the diversity of those who show up weekly.

“Most of them here are… just looking for community,” she said. “We are all just people at the end of the day.”

Part of Something Bigger

Morales, who aspires to start a nonprofit someday herself, knows that individual health and prosperity are not solved by a single program, especially for those facing poverty. Food insecurity is not an isolated issue. It is tied to one's ability to learn, work, communicate, stay healthy, and feel stable.

“I feel like all of us have this idea of how we want the world to look,” Morales said. “But it really is about so many different things that make a better society work, which includes the food, which includes having a safe place to live… I appreciate Small Things because it helps fill at least one of the needs.”