On Thursday, October 16th, my group and I went to 51st st. between Park and Lexington, to volunteer at a soup kitchen, run by Coalition for the Homeless.
When we first arrived at St. Bartholomew’s Church, there was a line of hungry people waiting to eat although the kitchen didn’t open for another hour or so. After a few minutes of awkward waiting we were finally noticed by one of the employees and escorted inside. After walking through a deserted ground floor and a few hallways, we stopped in a nice room filled with food and fall decorations. My first reaction was to the smell of the pans of wonderful food that littered the tables. We later learned that food feeds an average of two-hundred people a night.
A few minutes after we were left in the room, Adam Perry, the leader of the volunteers came in to introduce us to the organization and to describe what exactly we were there to do. After putting on aprons, gloves and hairnets we were ready to work. The first job for us three girls was to prepare food bowls for the people in need. We had to figure out how to stuff a carb, meat, and a few veggies, all of which are donated from local restaurants/kitchens and delivered by City Harvest, into a tiny bowl about the size of my two fists. After creating an array of choices, from pasta with steak and zucchini, to a baked potato, grilled chicken and broccoli, we moved on to our next job; setting out the sandwiches.
The two-hundred people that come through that night enter the building, pick up a bowl of soup, an orange, a small carton of milk, either a bowl or sandwich or both depending on how much food there is, and lastly choose their dessert of a cookie or pastry.
As the people came around, the majority of them being homeless or low income (have a salary less then forty-thousand dollars a year), Monica, Siena and Nancy (my stepmother) worked at the bowl/sandwich station, while I worked across the room handing out dessert. The first to go was the cookies, specifically chocolate chip while occasionally settling for white chocolate macadamia, then the croissants and lastly the rolls. It was a generous night for desert, originally setting the limit at two per person but as the people diminished, the limit increased to three.
While some people didn’t listen to the limit, others respected it and treated us volunteers with respect and gratitude. The different approaches of different people was fascinating. There were a few older men who greeted me with an off-putting “Heeelllloo gorgeous,” along with the warm older woman who treated me as if I was a long lost grandchild, calling me sweetie or darling. Some people asked politely, while some just pointed and licked their lips. I came across a few people who pretended they hadn’t gotten food yet, although I was positive I’d already put two cookies in their bag about three times.
However no matter the attitude of each person, helping all of those people in need was by far the most rewarding thing i’ve ever done so far in my life. To help less fortunate people and see the gratitude behind their eyes when handing them food is one of the best sights in the world, and volunteering at this specific church is something I would like to continue to do as long as they will have me.
Coalition for the Homeless has 3 food vans that go around New York City feeding people who live off the streets, each van feeding about two-hundred and fifty people a night, making the amount of people this great organization feeds a night in New York CIty roughly nine-hundred. With around two-hundred to three-hundred help location around the country, and fifty international stations, Coalition for the Homeless is a prominent poverty fighting organization and I recommend either donating, and/or volunteering, because it’s truly a great cause.
