Several weeks ago the Santa Clarita Atheists and Freethinkers signed up to provide and serve dinner to the homeless in Santa Clarita, California, last Sunday they completed this task.
We were told that we must be prepared to feed between 60 and 100 people. If the night was extra cold, more people would show up than the lucky 60 who have winter beds in the shelter. A few of the local churches serve many of the dinners during the year, and so with their permission I attended one of their evenings to see how it’s done. I got several good ideas. They were surprised but they seemed genuinely pleased that an atheist group wanted to help, because not every night ends up covered.
With the contributions of 30 members, we bought lasagna and chicken from Sam’s Club, and when Sam’s found out what we were doing, they donated all the lasagna for free. (Thank you very much!) We also made salad, vegetarian bean soup, home-baked chocolate cookies, and provided bananas, oranges, milk, and bottles of water.
I definitely want to do this again, and I hope that my group can make it a regular thing. It made our group a more cohesive team and brought out leadership and organizational skills in several members. It was fun and heartwarming, but it was also sad and sobering because providing an occasional meal to a few dozen people is such a tiny response to such an enormous and awful problem.
Read the full story at the Friendly Atheist Blog
