Goals:
- Help a local soup kitchen in its work providing food to the hungry.
- Engage congregants in personal interaction with the local impoverished population.
Overview:
Many congregations volunteer weekly or monthly to cook and serve a meal in a local soup kitchen.
Preparation:
Contact a soup kitchen or shelter in your area to identify local needs. Send a message to congregants via the synagogue’s newsletter to recruit volunteers.
Project Implementation:
Congregants can volunteer on a regular basis, or you can set up a rotating schedule. The most successful programs are regular—once a week or month.
Volunteers can help in many different ways:
- Coordinating with soup kitchen staff;
- Purchasing supplies and ingredients;
- Cooking meals at the synagogue or soup kitchen;
- Delivering meals to the soup kitchen;
- Serving food to clients;
- Compiling simple, healthy, inexpensive and tasty recipes for a cook book, which can be sold as a fundraising tool;
- Creating religious school lessons on poverty and hunger to complement a day of volunteering.
Results:
Through regular interactions, congregants develop close working relationships with other congregants, soup kitchen staff, and with the clients. Volunteers are able to interact and share a meal with people with different life experiences than their own.
