Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 7
“Earth’s Mightiest Heroes!” This is how the superhero team of the Avengers is known. Each one of them—Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor and the Black Widow (shown at right), among others—has their own special powers and abilities. But in partnership with the others on the team, together they are unstoppable!
The same is true when Serve the City partners with local charities and social services to create projects that could not happen without the partnership. The non-profits and social services have access to the big issues in the city and the people affected by them; but Serve the City has the ability to mobilize volunteers that maximize the work the partners are doing.
In this episode, we see how Serve the City Brussels partners closely with the Community Kitchen, a non-profit that was started by an STC volunteer, Gayl Russell, in the kitchen of Holy Trinity Anglican Church. Together, the Community Kitchen now makes over 5000 meals a week that are distributed to hungry people by Serve the City volunteers in other project partner charities. And the Community Kitchen also benefits from Serve the City Brussels sending it hundreds of volunteers a week through its ServeNow app.
Listen to the episode here:
Gayl Russell is the founder of the Community Kitchen, which started just prior to COVID to help create food for various food outreach projects. Gayl had been a volunteer at La Phare, a twice weekly sit-down meal for homeless people hosted by the Salvation Army and manned by STC volunteers. As she tried to prepared meals for 150 people in the tiny kitchen there, she thought about the huge industrial kitchen at her church, Holy Trinity Anglican, and she approached them to see if they would let them prepare food there.
The answer was yes! And with the pandemic, the need for takeaway meals grew as soup kitchens and shelters shut their doors. At the time, the Community Kitchen became particularly known for its muffins, part of the breakfasts served to people on the streets. You can see Gayl here with some of the famous muffins!
During the pandemic, we made an episode about this called Compassion, Courage and Coronavirus featuring these food projects that you might enjoy.
On the first day we visited the Community Kitchen, they welcomed a guest chef from the US State Department’s Culinary Corps. (We joked that if this really were the Avengers, this partner would be Captain America!) Chef Kevin Tian has his own highly rated restaurant called Moon Rabbit in Washington DC, but today he is making chickpea stew in the Community Kitchen.
In the middle picture, Chef Kevin is with Aline, the Operations Manager and Akra, the Kitchen Manager, both employees of the Community Kitchen. Aline and Akra welcome and manage the STC volunteers that come to help each day. Each week they produce over 5000 meals which are delivered by STC volunteers to other non-profits (such as the Humanitarian Hub, in partnership with the Red Cross)… where further STC volunteers will serve them to hungry people.
Virtually all of the food produced by the Community Kitchen is vegan, as this allows for most of the dietary restrictions of the clients (people who eat halal, for example. However, Akra told us that they vary the dishes every day, changing up the vegetables and carbohydrates used, so that the meals are not bland or boring.
Nathan Torrini, Marie Bennett, and Jeremie Malengreaux make up the Executive Team of Serve the City Brussels. In the episode, we said that if this partnership were the Avengers, Nathan would be Nick Fury, because as Executive Director he is the one who manages the project partnerships with other non-profits and social services (calling the Avengers to assemble!) Nathan told us that he has many more inquiries from other potential partner organizations who want to add value to their operations through STC volunteer teams.
Jeremie is the author of the ServeNow app, which is used by Brussels to recruit, register and organize volunteers on projects. (Jeremie was not surprised when we identified him with the techno-savvy Avenger Tony Stark in the episode!) The ServeNow app has been a game-changer in terms of mobilization, and is now beginning to be used by other STC cities (e.g. Paris, Dublin and Lisbon). Aline, the Operations Manager at the Community Kitchen, said:
We always know how many people we’ll have for the volunteers. They can just cancel their shift if something happened and they cannot come. So we have a really good track of who will be there to help. It’s really way easier, in the partnership with the volunteers. I can’t imagine how we would run this project without the ServeNow app.
Aline, Community Kitchen
Below is a video about the ServeNow app:
We visited the Community Kitchen again on a Tuesday when it was running its weekly Food Bank. This is done in partnership with L’Olivier, a social and legal assistance non-profit for refugees. Each week, about 80-90 people wait their turn to choose six items from a minimum of twelve non-perishable foodstuffs. While they are waiting, volunteers serve coffee, tea and cookies for free from the church coffee bar, and afterwards, people are welcome to eat or take home a meal from the Community Kitchen.
Our guides at the Food Bank were Annie Bolger and Chris DeFortis (below). Annie is one of the chaplains at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, which still hosts the Community Kitchen although it is now an independent non-profit, and she acts as the church liaison. Chris, though he works full-time at NATO, founded L’Olivier in 1992; it was one of STC Brussels’ first partnerships when it started almost 20 years ago.
If you want to learn more about the Community Kitchen, here’s an article from the Brussels Times.
