A couple of Sundays ago I spent a few hours in the kitchen/dining room of the local Bend's Community Center (BCC), where every Sunday, 52 weeks a year, full nutritious meals, along with sack lunches to go, are served for those who are homeless or underemployed.  The amount of people coming through range from 200-300 per Sunday.  Many of these folks are part of family units. 

This meal is one of several programs provided by BCC for this group of people in Central Oregon.  In addition,  the BCC is only one of several services that provide meals and food to the disadvantaged in our area;  in total it is a program called Feed the Hungry.

Because of their newly remodeled industrial kitchen, BCC now provides cooked meals for other shelters and meal kitchens (who do not have industrial kitchens) across Central Oregon.  These other agencies bring raw food materials to the BCC,  BCC volunteers prepare it and send the food back ready for distribution.  The BCC kitchen is busy every day.

As part of my Rotary Club of Bend  responsibilities, I was moving through my duties at BCC, which included washing pots, pans, serving dishes, putting things away, stocking the tables, and other duties as noticed or request.  While I was performing these duties, my thoughts wandered here:

This is hard physical work!  How does Taffy (the Executive Director) do this every day, every week, all year long?

The regular volunteers, several of whom come every week, without fail, are nothing short of angels.  NOTE: In talking with them, they are all humble, quiet people who just are doing their parts towards a larger community goal of taking care of those who are at this time less fortunate.

There’s some tough love here.  Taffy had to get tough with some of the regular guests—who were attempting to take home more than their share of leftovers, or other commodities provided by BCC.

Why don’t I come more often than on my Rotary rotations?  Every time I come I’m so humbled and inspired…why don’t I just get on with it and come more often? (So far no answer to that question…)

I had told Taffy that I was going to post to the Virtual Tea House about what’s going on over at the BCC regarding these meals.  So when I got home I sent her an email with some questions.  Here are her answers.

1.      How long has BCC been serving these meals?  
Since 2004
NOTE: That’s 312 Sunday meals for 200+ people…

2.      What would it cost to do a single meal (if you had to buy all the food)?  
About $1150

NOTE: On the Sunday I was there, they were serving wild salmon, ‘recovered’ from poachers, along with delicious hollandaise sauce donated Deschutes Brewery, along with great salads, sides, mounds of buttery mashed potatoes, pies and loads and loads of artisan breads for the guests to take home.  This was all donated by the community at large.

3.      How many volunteers do you have?
We have hundreds throughout the year. On an average about 40 per week.

NOTE: About 15 volunteers are there every week.  Every single week.  These volunteers were very glad that our Rotary club members there to provide some assistance, especially with clean up which sometimes takes the regular volunteers and Taffy until 7pm on a given Sunday, if there’s not enough help.  We were done by 5:30pm.

4.      What are some of the projects that need doing?
We have painting projects, putting shelves together at our warehouse for donations, sorting donations, ripping up old carpet and putting down peel and press carpet at the thriftstore. We also do eBay sales and could sue a regular crew to help with that. We need to take digital photos of our eBay items , load them onto the eBay site with a description of the item.  We need someone to snowplow our parking lot in the winter, landscaping in the spring and summer. This summer we want to remodel Becca’s Closet to make it more efficient and more attractive. It’s pretty ugly right now.

NOTE: Taffy said she could use 20 volunteers a day to do a few hours of work.  The needs are never ending.

5.      Do you have a short story about someone’s life being changed or something like that you’d like to share?
We have helped several homeless women and their kids to get into a house, into our job training program and turn their lives around. We’ve donated 5 cars to families without cars. We've gotten 7 job trainees cars fixed up so they were safe to drive (new tires, brake jobs, and other basic necessities).

6.      Any stories about the volunteers, or donations by the community that you’d like to share?
We’ve had 4-Hr’s donate their pigs and lambs to our FTH program. We've had little kids do penny drives in their neighborhoods and brought in $14 worth of pennies. Girl scouts have made candles for the homeless and done warm clothing drives. One man went out and bought over $1,000 worth of tents, tarps and winter boots for the homeless. Another man wet to Cash N Carry and bought a week’s worth of food for us. We have several retired ladies on fixed incomes who go shopping for us every month to find our basic necessities on sale and donate $20 - $25 worth of food and cleaning supplies and toilet paper every month. One neighborhood and a huge multifamily garage sale and donated the proceeds to FTH (Feed the Hungry).

Ron B. is one of our long-time volunteers. He is 70, legally blind, but he comes in almost every Friday and Saturday from 9am – 2pm to cook for the homeless. We have about 15 volunteers who have been coming in almost every week for 2-3 years, including high school kids. 

You can see why my heart was opened, yet again, by the mission of BCC.  Taffy herself is an inspiration: committed, tough, resourceful, a great manager of people and resources.  She has her volunteers’ respect and admiration.

If any of this has touched your heart, go on over to the website and check the BCC out. It’s for real.  And it is only through the generosity of the community that the mission of BCC can survive and thrive.  BCC needs your heart and your hands!   And maybe, if I get off my duff, or give up a hike on a Sunday, you’ll see me there…

Call Bend's Community Center at 541.312.2069 to find out how you can be of service.

Website: Bend Community Center