Our Loaves and Fishes Ministry at St. Teresa serves the needs of our community by preparing and serving hot, nutritionally-balanced meals every Friday for the elderly, homeless and others in need in our community. We provide a welcoming environment and treat our guests with dignity, respect and courtesy while serving between 60-80 meals a week. We also partner with local restaurants to occasionally provide our meals. In addition to the meal, our guests also receive a water, dessert, snacks, fruit and some weeks a sack lunch prepared by local grade school students. Many of our guests have commented that this is the best meal they have the entire week.
Our meals are currently served as a "to-go" bundle for our guests. We are also beginning to provide the option for our guests to enjoy their meal indoors in the St. Teresa cafeteria on days where the weather is inclement. This will require more meal servers as we are still preparing the meal bags but now also providing some coffee and conversation for our indoor dining guests.
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
• Cooking Team Lead: Lead a cooking team once every couple of months to prepare one of our Friday meals. We have menu ideas and will do the shopping. Kitchen helpers can be provided as needed. Cooking happens on Friday (or Thursday if needed).
• Kitchen Helper: Become a kitchen helper and join a cooking team based on your availability and the needs of the cooking teams (chopping, prep, plating, cleanup, etc.) We offer 3-4 hour morning or afternoon shifts on Fridays.
• Restaurant Outreach/Recruitment: Recruit a local restaurant to provide a weekly meal for our guests.
• Meal Server: Join the L&F meal serving team on Friday from 3:00-6:00. Hand out our meals and engage with our guests.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
If you are interested in assisting with the Loaves and Fishes dinners, please contact one of our Loaves and Fishes Leads below:
Cooking Teams
• Maryann Miskiewicz, mkminc@rcn.com , (773)519-1826
• Diane Sibon, sibonfamily@aol.com , (630)605-3426
Serving Teams
• Steve Sibon, sjsibon@aol.com , (630)881-3348
• Rich Cummings, jrcummings@rcn.com , (773)405-9315