When the Community Kitchen began its annual Fast Day campaign 20 years ago to help fund its unique and vital mission, it would have taken a visionary to foresee the scope of services this humble approach eventually would help build. The Kitchen had been providing free meals daily to homeless and needy individuals and families, but it was then just imagining what might be accomplished with the charitable help of countless donors who might willingly skip a meal and donate their lunch money for a day to the Kitchen’s cause.
The fundraising idea was both simple and relevant. Donors didn’t have to dig too deeply or fast too long, and many could help. The experience of a short fast, moreover, would connect to the reality of the real hunger experienced regularly by people who are truly hungry, usually jobless, and often homeless. That insight would give deeper meaning to their gift.
School classes, business and church groups, and many individuals have recognized both the symbolic value and the positive impact their Fast Day donations have made. Over the years, many donors have decided to fast at lunch as a group, some for a day, others for a week or more.
Broad public support
Public support for Fast Day has broadened as well. It’s been aided significantly by a long list of annual Fast Day chairpersons – this year, Hacker and Kitty Caldwell – selected by the Kitchen’s volunteer board.
Community support has added up. The first year, Fast Day donations amounted to $94,000; this year, the 20th annual Fast Day goal is $700,000. With broad dedication and understanding of the Kitchen’s now comprehensive services, that’s an achievable and worthy goal.
Fast Day donations are crucial. For starters, city government – despite all the airy talk about a homeless center the past six years – has no homeless program and offers none of the services that the Community Kitchen provides. The Kitchen, moreover, receives no funding from the United Way, and none from local governments save a passed-through federal grant for some limited housing options.
The Kitchen is primarily funded by an ecumenical group of caring church congregations, but the Community Kitchen’s Fast Day donations have become essential in its budget. They now help fund a range of services aimed at helping homeless and jobless individuals and families get back on their feet.
The Kitchen’s original building on 11th Street (across from the city’s former Farmers Market), for example, has become the center of a block-long complex offering much more than the basic three, free meals a day. Its services include job training and placement, permanent and transitional housing for needy families, respite-care facilities for the sick, an educational day center, two night shelters, foot care, clothing and household items, triage services, outreach, and access to mental health, sobriety treatment and health care services.
Since its founding, the Community Kitchen has served well over 1.5 million meals. Many meals are taken daily by individuals and families who have lost their jobs, then their homes, and often their cars. And in the harsh recession of the past three years, the numbers of homeless families and children in need of food aid and other services have spiked.
In 2008, for example, the Kitchen served 130,749 meals. In 2009, it served 171,001 meals, all with the help of volunteers who contributed 12,045 hours to this task. This year, the Kitchen had served over 105,000 meals in the first half of the year alone – a pace sure to set another annual record.
Wide range of services
A range of other indices measure the Kitchen’s immense value to the needy of this community. In 2009, its clothing and thrift store (which accepts and needs donations) gave away $281,279 worth of goods, and had sales of $32,271 to help support its operations.
The Kitchen provided permanent housing support for victims of domestic violence in 88 families (91 adults and 184 children) last year. It provided transitional housing for 19 families (25 adults and 30 children), all of whom had income when they exited the related job program.
Also last year, the Kitchen’s Employment and Life-skills program served 357 adults: 95 percent graduated from the program with jobs, and 74 percent moved to permanent housing. All these programs are ongoing. They, too, are also on track to serve more people this year than last year.
The Kitchen also operates a recycling program, for which it accepts glass, paper and plastic through a curbside drop-off service. Though its recycling income is small, the program is one of several used to establish work skills in its jobs program.
Area residents who wish to help the Kitchen continue all this vital work through Fast Day should feel free to fast at any meal or on any day for the rest of the year, and send or take a donation to the Community Kitchen, P.O. Box 11203, 727 11th St., Chattanooga, TN 37401. For more information, see the Kitchen’s website: www.homeless chattanooga.org