When she was in the third grade, Katie Stagliano received a homework assignment that changed her life: To grow a cabbage from a single seedling. Hers grew to about 40 pounds. She took the cabbage to the local soup kitchen, where it was served with ham and rice to around 275 people.
“When I looked at the people in line I thought ‘wow, they’re just like my family,'” Katie says of her experience handing out food that day. “For all I know, they could have been my family who had fallen on hard times.” Six years later, Katie’s Krops supports 75 youth-run gardens in 27 states and has raised over $200,000.
Watch Katie’s remarkable story here, and check out the feature film The Starfish Throwers where she is featured alongside two others whose individual efforts to feed the poor are igniting a movement in the fight against hunger.
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Tag: soup kitchen
The Surprising Secret of This New York City Cafe
How do we help a person in need if he or she feels shame for stepping foot into a soup kitchen and asking for food?
That’s just the problem that Masbia soup kitchens in Boro Park, Brooklyn and Queens attempts to solve. Which is why they treat their patrons to nutritious, kosher meals served in a comfortable, restaurant-like setting. When you walk into any Masbia, you’re greeted by a server who leads you to your table — just like any other eatery in the Big Apple. You’re then given a hot, healthy meal that’s been prepared by a kitchen staff of mostly volunteers. The meals are completely free. In fact, the kitchens don’t even have cash registers.
MORE: This Girl With Cancer Could Have Asked for Anything. She Chose to Feed the Hungry
You may remember we profiled Masbia back in December (check out this video from NationSwell video editor Jacob Templin) and the network of kitchens have certainly been growing since. As the Good News Network reports, in January alone, the nonprofit has served 5,583 meals and distributed 7,840 bags of groceries. According to their Facebook page, the three Masbia kitchens have already served more than 500,000 meals to hungry New Yorkers, many of them children. This year, the organization anticipates providing more than one million meals.
“There is some scripture about ‘people didn’t die of hunger, they died of shame for asking.’ So taking away that stigma is giving people access to food,” says Masbia Network executive director Alexander Rapaport. “Doing it with dignity means people will come.”
The Restaurant Without a Cash Register
The phrase “soup kitchen” doesn’t exactly ooze comfort. Getting meals to the homeless or hungry is usually a bare-bones affair, involving the most inexpensive food and all the ambiance of a basement cafeteria. But walking into a soup kitchen run by Masbia, a group founded in 2005 and now operating three store fronts across Brooklyn and Queens, feels different. The food is fresh, cooked by chef Ruben Diaz and volunteers, and meals incorporate donations from city farmers’ markets and local CSAs. There’s art on the walls. The chairs don’t fold. It looks like a restaurant, and it is—one where nobody has to pick up the check themselves.
Masbia say they served nearly 800,000 meals in 2013, and are on pace to hit 1 million this year. The food is kosher—the founders are Hasidic Jews, and the first store front opened in Boro Park, a primarily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood—but people of all creeds are welcome. Many of the volunteers preparing the food are patrons, who work a few hours and then take their meals with employees. But while volunteers help, private donations are what keep the doors open, making up much of the year’s $2 million operating budget.
When NationSwell video editor Jacob Templin visited Masbia recently, he found that almost everyone he spoke to said this was the only soup kitchen they had visited. And perhaps it’s not so surprising: Dignified surroundings, and healthy, comforting meals, raise Masbia above the standard, a welcome reminder that seeking help with food doesn’t have to be a gloomy affair.