Volunteers at the Lethbridge Soup Kitchen (Lethbridge News Now)

By Justin Goulet

Feeding the Hungry

Two Lethbridge groups team-up for evening meal program

Sep 4, 2019 | 6:27 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Streets Alive Mission and the Lethbridge Soup Kitchen are teaming up.

The partnership between the two charities will have Streets Alive Mission’s evening meal program relocate to the Soup Kitchen’s facility. The transition will take effect October 1, 2019.

The Soup Kitchen has been providing afternoon meals for 35 years, according to Executive Director Bill Ginther. He said a year and a half ago, they began serving breakfast to those in need in Lethbridge.

“There are three meals in a day, so we decided that we should really do that and when Ken Kissick from Streets Alive approached us last fall and asked about the possibility of doing that, it just made compete sense to us,” Ginther remarked.

On the flipside, Streets Alive Mission has had a feeding program for over 20 years, which began as a mobile unit serving sandwiches on the streets of the city.

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Co-founder Ken Kissick said eventually, they moved that operation into their downtown facility, which allowed them to serve up hot meals.

“The reality is that we just simply outgrew our space, we were never designed to do that but we were noticing that hot meals were increasing the health of the people , so we reached out to the Soup Kitchen and asked what (the chances were) of us partnering and both boards got working on it, we came up with a memorandum of understanding, we finalized the final details here last week and we’re getting ready to move here on the first of October,” he explained.

The partnership was a match made in heaven as Kissick said there are many benefits to moving to the Lethbridge Soup Kitchen, including more spacing to serve more people.

“It’s going to be good for the people because it gives them a centralized location. It’s going to be good for the volunteers and the staff because it’s a facility that’s really designed to serve people – they can be more creative in meal-making, better to manage people and a better space. We could only handle about 60 at a time, now we can handle 100,” he said.

The Soup Kitchen is located beside the Lethbridge Shelter and Resource Centre, another benefit to this new partnership, according to Ginther.

“Most of our homeless folks live there, certainly not all, but they’re right here. They don’t have to trudge downtown (after a meal),” he said.

“It will also reduce the amount of movement of people. The general public isn’t always that receptive to seeing homeless people wandering around downtown even though they are our neighbours. This will limit that a little bit as well.”

Ginther added that there have been recent enhancements made to the Soup Kitchen, including new tables and chairs, new paint and a freshly waxed floor, helping create a more welcoming environment.

Kissick added that they noticed sometimes, families did not feel safe eating at Streets Alive’s downtown operation. With the move into the newly touched-up Soup Kitchen, families may be more inclined to use their services and enjoy a hot meal.

He expanded on how they hope to create a strong social environment and improve the health of community members.

“With anyone who is down and out, often food is the last thought and you don’t often have resources for it. You may get junk. The reality is we all know, a good healthy meal will create good, healthy people. The healthier the street population is, the less of a drain it is on the services like the hospital, the ER and everything else. They are able to sustain themselves,” he stated.

“We’re heading into winter. When people have poor health, that can deteriorate quickly for them into pneumonia. The other aspect of it that everybody misses out is (that) we all like sitting around the table as family, so this is an opportunity to create a social environment as well, not only with probably a lot of people they know on the street, but with the volunteers who get a chance to interact with them (clients). It just builds a good sense of community.”

The evening meal program at the Soup Kitchen will be open from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.

Streets Alive Mission currently serves about 3,000 to 3,750 meals each month, depending on the season. The Lethbridge Soup Kitchen serves about 3,700 meals (breakfast and lunch) each month.