Community Meals

Hello,

The lunch meals served in the community are perhaps more directly focused on children, but adults are welcome as well. Several churches along the street support this effort. They also get money from some other source that I am not clear about. It is a source that regulates the nutrition of the meals. I am happy about that. For instance no desserts are served and the only foods that are available for seconds are fruits and vegetables. Probably some do not like that, but I am all for it. It is also necessary to keep a count of the people who eat, noting (really guessing, since we do not ask) age, sex, and race. I was responsible for that. On the first day I totally forgot to mark down race until about half of the people had gone past. In an attempt to make it more accurate people had a new race assigned to them. Not that they knew anything about it. I will have to say that most of the people were very polite with please and thank you being a part of their vocabulary. I believe there are other places to get a meal, but we served over a hundred people both days. This is served five days a week.

I come at ten to help prepare food, do that people count, and help with clean up leaving at 1:30 so it takes up a big slice of my day. I gain from it by meeting some of the people from my church on a more causal basis than Sunday morning. I also get to see some of my neighbors. I am grateful that they are comfortable enough to come to meet their needs. I still think that it would be nice to be able to provide them with a way out of the situation they are in. Food for the short term is nice, but the long term looks grim for some. I do not, unfortunately, have solutions to that. There is also the benefit to me of that good feeling for helping out. I must look for more opportunities to do that. Next Wednesday will be my last day on this job.

Paula