by Ed Dobrowolski and Ronnie Dobrowolski, Social Action Ministry
If you are new to UUCWC, you may not know the story behind Loaves and Fishes, one of our congregation’s longest-running social action outreach efforts. Loaves and Fishes is an organization that provides weekend meals for the homeless and working poor at various locations in Trenton. Twice a month, that weekend meal is served at St Mary’s Cathedral in Trenton. Food is provided for those meals by different congregations and social justice organizations in Mercer County.
For more than 30 years, UUCWC and the UU Congregation of Princeton (UUCP) have partnered on a Saturday in the spring to provide a sit-down hot meal and a take-out meal when Loaves and Fishes is at St. Mary’s. This year, UUCWC and UUCP will be providing the meal on Saturday, March 29th.
One out of eight people in New Jersey is food insecure, meaning they lack an adequate, consistent supply of food. Through our involvement with Loaves and Fishes, we hope to provide the food that folks need to sustain themselves, while we simultaneously work to change the systems that allow hunger to exist in the United States in the twenty-first century.
For many years, we served five hundred meals and had up to ninety volunteers each year, making brownies and serving food at St. Mary’s.
This year, the Food Ministry will cook taco chicken with all the trimmings for the Saturday meal and provide a take-home serving of chicken. Volunteers will assemble brown bag lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fruit.
So, how can you help?
This year, the brown-bag lunches will be made at UUCWC. We will need ten volunteers to serve the meal on Saturday to about 250 guests at St. Mary’s. Volunteers assist in preparing St. Mary’s community room for the meal, serve snacks and hot beverages before lunch, serve the main meal, and clean up after lunch. Volunteers from UUCP and other organizations will also help with the meal.
We need volunteers to bake 250 brownies! Each volunteer should provide two dozen brownies. Volunteers can sign up at a SignUpGenius link to be provided in the weekly emails.
This year UUCWC continues its tradition of ensuring that the people who come to St. Mary’s for a meal can leave a little less hungry.