St. James’ Soup Kitchen feeds the heart and soul
VOLUNTEER COOKS come out from the kitchen to help serve, including Willie Garcia (left) and Sudeep Biswas (right).
By Margaret A. Ecker
Delayed food stamp funding, inadequate housing, lack of access to mental health resources, and increased cost of health care coverage all converge to aggravate an already arduous existence for low-income and unhoused residents in Los Angeles.
The Soup Kitchen at St. James’ Episcopal Church, located on Wilshire Boulevard near Wilton Place, has been providing services for 40 years. Initially conceived to deliver meals to the homebound living with AIDS, the soup kitchen has become a safe space from the street for unhoused neighbors. Ultimately, it’s a story of community-building for everyone involved.
Three times a week, for a few hours at a time, volunteers offer home-cooked, nutritious meals made using rescued produce secured from . Volunteers also provide donated clothing, books from a lending library, hygiene products, a phone charging station, an art table, and even quality time at an electric piano keyboard for those gifted guests who know how to tickle the ivories. Licensed hairdressers provide free cuts. Volunteer doctors with In the People’s Corner set up an informal clinic in the courtyard to field primary care problems. Staff from the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health’s Peer Resource Center mingle with guests.
VOLUNTEER COOK WILLIE GARCIA presents his bread pudding, making sure the dish is not only nutritious, but beautiful.
Volunteers refer to what happens at the soup kitchen as relationship-based service. The approach is described in the church’s Volunteer Agreement: “We build respect by meeting people where they are, rather than trying to bring people to where we think they ought to be.”
The unhoused demographic that shows up can make that approach challenging. A core group of around 100 guests attend week to week. Most have been chronically homeless and living on the street for years. Most struggle with mental health and substance-use disorders. And yet, as volunteers report, their gratitude is almost palpable, even as their problems seem insurmountable.
When someone does get housed, they often continue to show up, a testament to the sense of community that is at the heart of the kitchen’s mission.
All of this is made possible by volunteers who report a surprising revelation that has surfaced in the past year or so: the soup kitchen is as impactful as a source of solace for those who give as it is for those who receive.
The volunteer roles are designed to be flexible, ready to accommodate a wide variety of skills and predilections. Don’t like chopping onions? You can help set up the tables. Don’t like talking to strangers? Head back to the storage shed to help sort donated clothes by size and category.
The approach for those who are served is likewise designed to meet people where they are. Don’t eat meat? Help yourself to the macaroni and cheese. Having a bad day? Come into the courtyard—let’s see if a cup of coffee and a conversation about the Dodgers will help. Don’t feel like talking to anyone at all? Check out the art table.
ANOTHER VOLUNTEER serving the guests with energy and generosity.
It surely helps that the setting is a church. For the record, the vast majority of the volunteers do not attend church regularly—not this one or any other one. The congregation at St. James’ is deeply supportive of the soup kitchen mission and those who make it possible. As the Rev. Kate Cress, St. James’ rector, said, “Don’t apologize about not going to church. The soup kitchen IS your church!” That adage helps to nurture the message that “All are welcome here.”
Many volunteers are stepping away from full-time jobs, college, or family obligations to make the soup kitchen run well. Even if just for a few hours, guests are able to step away from the stress of homelessness or domestic instability, or from struggles with mental health, substance use, or hunger. Guests and volunteers come together to chat for a few hours on a Saturday morning or a Tuesday evening, nurturing the gifts of human kindness. No judgment. No prerequisites. No clipboards. Really no formal goals beyond making small talk and good company. The gift of community is a greatgift.
Increasingly, an outcome of relationship-based service is the concern for what happens to unhoused people when the soup kitchen is over for the day. Conversations have started taking place about how to build stronger bridges between those served and the services available to them. One promising idea on the table is to raise funds to finance the soup kitchen’s first paid employee. The role would be filled by a person skilled in social work or case management who could build on relationships fostered at the soup kitchen by accompanying people to service destinations, helping to navigate online documents, or giving rides to the Social Security office or the food stamp office, all helping to build trust where trust has faltered in the past. Raising those funds represents a new challenge for the team.
VOLUNTEER HAIRDRESSER Maria Lascaibar with regular guest George Orfan-(could-be-Clooney!).
But for now, the work to nurture community remains. St. James’ soup kitchen welcomes volunteers and donations, especially during this holiday season, and throughout the year.
To volunteer, visit the online signup at luma.com/user/greatfood.
To donate online visit secure.myvanco.com/YM5N/campaign/C-YYWT.
For more information, email GreatFood@STJLA.org.
Margaret Ecker lives in Los Feliz and is the Lead Volunteer at St. James’ Episcopal Church Soup Kitchen. Ecker retired from pediatric nursing in 2011. She told the Chronicle the main source of volunteer recruitment is word of mouth…or paper!
The soup kitchen receives donated food and cooks on Thursdays feeding the hungry and setting tablecloths, flowers, and china on Fridays and Saturdays. The space used for cooking and serving at St. James’ Church is shared with the oldest Alcholics Anonymous (AA) meet-up group in L.A. As a consequence, Ecker recalls the fun volunteers have due to the time pressure: “Called ‘Cooking Thursdays,’ it’s the day all the rescued produce comes. It’s crazy! Like a reality show; what to cook out of what has arrived, and get it done in two or three hours because the space has to go back to AA by six!”
Category: People
