Saint Vincent DePaul Soup Kitchen

01/04/2021

Council: 101 - PORTLAND

Project Description:

The St. Vincent DePaul Soup Kitchen provides food, clothing and other various sundries to the homeless, unemployed, underemployed, refugees and other needy people in the greater Portland area. Thirteen members of our council worked at the St. Vincent DePaul Soup Kitchen in Portland during the past year pre-pandemic with seven of them continuing to work during the pandemic. From January into early March we provided sit down lunches, a limited food pantry and weekly clothing hand outs. Around mid march the pandemic forced us to be limited to bag lunches, eventually we added a more extensive food pantry. Finally we added handing out clothing and various sundries. It should be noted that we never had to close the soup kitchen because of the pandemic, even though services were reduced and/or changed during the course of the year. The soup kitchen was feeding anywhere from 75 to 150 people daily, Monday through Friday pre-pandemic. Since then we are assisting 50 to 100 people on a daily basis with only take-out food and other items. Duties included preparing and serving food plus clean up while we were able to serve meals pre-pandemic, picking up food donations from area supermarkets, the Wayside Food Program and other donors, buying needed supplies that are not donated, sorting through and marking clothing and various sundries, putting lunches together, sorting out food items and displaying them on tables for our clients to pick through, cleaning the kitchen and premises as needed, and various other activities that make the soup kitchen operate as well as it does. One of our members is the president of the soup kitchen, another is acting president in his absence while also serving on the board of directors and a third member is on the board of directors and a shift supervisor, all of these duties which oversee the smooth operation of the soup kitchen and its dozens of volunteers and hundreds of clients. Our council has also supported the soup kitchen with a $3,000 donation in 2020.