Hot Lunch at Providence Soup Kitchen

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Providence Soup Kitchen, a ministry of the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence, has been providing hot lunch to the homeless and people in need since 1986. It is located at 1351 W Evergreen Ave, Chicago, IL 60642 (right across from Pulaski Park). The soup kitchen entrance is accessible from the church parking lot on the south side of the church.

Here’s an article by the Greater Chicago Food Depository underlining the continuing efforts of volunteers and experiences of guests - https://www.chicagosfoodbank.org/blog/west-town-soup-kitchen-carries-on-through-covid-19/. Many of the long-time volunteers of the soup kitchen are older adults. For health risk reasons, many of them have not returned since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Your help is very very much needed!

The soup kitchen serves hot lunch Mon-Thurs, from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm. Volunteers work from 9 am to 1 pm to prepare, serve lunch and clean up afterwards. In recent weeks, the soup kitchen has been serving 100 to 125 guests per day.

We need three cooks - one each for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. If volunteering to cook, the menu usually consists of one main dish and two side dishes. Two large trays of each dish are prepared and all six trays are placed in a large oven. Some examples of food we’ve prepared - main (ham, chicken, pork chop, sausages, fish taco, beef taco, pasta, rice/meat), side dish (squash, mixed veggies, sweet potato, bread, beans). We also serve hot soup at every meal.

Help is also and always needed with washing and clean up. There are a lot of pots, pans and sheet pans to wash. Additional volunteers are needed to help with food preparation, sorting/ gleaning/ cutting up veggies/ fruits for storage to use later, sorting/organizing other stuff (clothes, food) that are given out from time to time.

Volunteers are especially needed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. For corporate volunteers, please limit your group size to max 6 members per day. Please plan to stay for the whole shift . If you have a larger group, you could divide your group and schedule each smaller group to come on different days.

If you're interested, please call/text Sr. Cathy Almagna, (773) 870-2344. When you call/text, it would be helpful if you can already state what day/s you’re available to volunteer and what role you’d like to play.

If you click/tap the "I want to help" button on top, the message will be sent to us as an email. We will try to give you a call within 48 h but note that emails are not checked on weekends.

Updated 7/12/24 F