On the Web
More information about the Stone Soup Community Meal is at:
www.facebook.com/pages/Stone-Soup-Community-Meal/1455696331328386
For more about the Blanket Brigade, visit:
www.facebook.com/pages/Blanket-Brigade/166267173404845
At the end of each month, a group of volunteers provides free meals to downtown Vancouver’s homeless, but their service extends beyond handing over a plate of hot food.
Those who volunteer at the monthly Stone Soup Community Meal also sit down, break bread and have conversations with those in need. For many of the homeless who attend the Sunday afternoon event, it could be the only pleasant, substantial interaction they’ve had this month with the “outside world,” said volunteer Michelle Bart, president of the Northwest Women’s Coalition Against Violence & Exploitation.
It was her second time volunteering at the Stone Soup, which is 1 to 3 p.m. on the last Sunday of each month in downtown’s Turtle Place Park. “I expected to hand the plate over, and they’d walk away,” Bart said, “but that’s not what happened.”
After dishing up baked ham, salad, carrot-ginger soup and gingerbread, the volunteers sat at the plastic tables and chairs that had been set up under a canopy and talked with their guests. The monthly meal has drawn community leaders, including political candidates, who are able to visit with some of their most vulnerable constituents, said Hector Hinojosa, one of the event’s creators.