On Friday evening, my staff of RAs and I went to the Human Services Program of Carroll County and served dinner at their cold weather shelter.
We made everything from scratch–spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, and salad. For dessert, one truly amazing member of our staff made caramel apple cheesecake and chocolate pineapple upside down cake. I helped my friend with the meatballs, which turned out to be a longer venture than planned–we started on Thursday evening at 6:30 and I didn’t leave until 11! We tripled the recipe, using about six pounds of meat, and each batch took almost an hour to cook.
After we had served about twenty people, we made ourselves plates of food and got to sit and eat with the people. My favourite part was talking to them and hearing their stories. Often times I feel like people, especially myself, skip over people without homes or thing of them as less human, which is entirely untrue. I particularly enjoyed talking to one woman about her cat. She’d had the cat since it was about four weeks old, and had a really close relationship with it.
It was scary hearing about these people’s situations. A few had found full time jobs, but still didn’t have the money for a down payment to rent property–generally, one needs the first and last month’s rent in addition to a security deposit.Another couple’s house had burned down and their insurance company wasn’t willing to pay anything, leaving them without a home. A few other McDaniel students were there–apparently some social work majors volunteer there often.
It also showed me how expensive food can really be. I’ve seen this small scale–while I love pasta, which is cheap, I also love vegetables, which are crazily expensive–but hadn’t thought about how much it would cost to feed people in such a shelter. We spent about one hundred dollars simply in making a homecooked meal for thirty or so people. The meat in particular was expensive.
They seemed to really enjoy the food we cooked though. I’m really glad our area coordinator encouraged us to go and volunteer; it left me feeling heartened at their optimism and friendliness.
Leave a Reply