A Service Reflection by Julia C
I was around ten when I first volunteered in a soup kitchen. My brother, Kevin, was doing a year of service as a Franciscan Volunteer Minister (FVM) at the St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.
Kevin joined the staff of the Inn and stayed for six years and met his wife there, cementing the connection between my family and the Inn. My regular visits to Kensington and the people who lived and worked there across the years were life-changing. The staff, FVMs, and guests of the Inn taught me patience, resilience, kindness, empathy, and radical hospitality.
Last summer, almost fifteen years after visiting Kevin in Philly for the first time, it felt natural to serve my community like my brother did. Through connections with other FVMs, I heard about St. Peter’s Kitchen, a soup kitchen in my hometown of Rochester, New York, and its new relationship with the Notre Dame Mission Volunteers. I became the first AmeriCorps member at St. Peter’s, eager to follow in my brother’s footsteps.
St. Francis Inn and St. Peter’s Kitchen are pretty similar on paper. Both are situated in the hearts of the cities they serve. They both intake thousands of pounds of food a week and through an almost alchemical process, they turn that food into thousands of meals that are distributed to their communities.
St. Peter’s is open for lunch every weekday and has a food pantry open Tuesdays and Thursdays. This means our neighbors have access to nutritious meals from our lunch line and groceries they can prepare on their own. Most of the food we receive comes from area grocery stores, so we’re combating food waste and hunger in one fell swoop. We also have a community garden, social work services, and seasonal programs, like a backpack collection, a holiday toy “store,” and Thanksgiving baskets. It’s fair to say that St. Peter’s Kitchen is the largest soup kitchen in Rochester, and it’s among the oldest, too.
My first few months at St. Peter’s were about learning the daily operations and building my place within them. I got used to the food preparation rules, the quick thinking of intaking donations, the rush of plating meals into to-go containers for guests to pick up, and I got to know the regular groups of volunteers that make St. Peter’s mission a reality. I was finding my place among the small group of dedicated staff members and the large team of volunteers, and I was finding ways to give of my skills, namely writing their newsletter.
St. Peter’s is currently undergoing some changes, but even as the changes occur, one thing remains consistent–lunch. Every day, volunteers march in bright and early; we start plating meals at 11:30, and the doors open at noon. For the next hour, people come through and pick up meals for themselves and their families, usually with extra food from the community tables. I find comfort in the work that drew me to St. Peter’s Kitchen in the first place with the people called to do the same work, and in the knowledge that, if nothing else, I helped put food on a neighbor’s plate.
And St. Peter’s puts a lot of food on plates, that’s for sure. Since I arrived in September, we’ve given out almost 95,000 meals across all of our programs, averaging around 13,000 a month, and our daily record in the lunch program is 398 meals. The whole world could be upside down, and we would still be putting food on the table. On the hard days, I turn to the volunteers and the task at hand for support and reassurance. I’m reminded of my childhood visits to the St. Francis Inn, my family, and the call that brought me to St. Peter’s and NDMVA.
