On February 17, we visited the Downtown Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry to help set up, serve food, and clean up. We were able to talk to some volunteers that come on a weekly basis and hear about the stories of people that have consistently come to the soup kitchen.
Key Takeaways:
- Not all who use the soup kitchen are homeless (in fact, most were not homeless)
- The homeless community seems to be friendly with each other- lots knew each other
- The volunteers have valuable information from interacting with the population every week
AEIOU:
Activities:
- Pouring soup in the cups
- Serving at the kitchen
- Handing out the “to go” bags of soup
- Setting up the tables and chairs
- Cleaning the tables afterwards and putting chairs on top of tables
Environment:
- First United Methodist Church (soup kitchen was in basement)
- Friday morning
- Approximately 50 people in the soup kitchen
- Several tables and chairs, probably about 75% full
- Large industrial kitchen
Interactions:
- Meeting the local volunteers
- Greeting the users as they came into the food pantry
- Answering questions from the users
- Handing out soup to go as the users were exiting the food pantry
Objects:
- Food and groceries
- Cups of soup
- Tables/chairs
Users:
- Volunteers
- People using the soup kitchen
- Both homeless and non homeless
- Other group members at the kitchen