According to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, 10 percent of the 600,000 residents of in the District of Columbia live in extreme poverty—and Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church (MMUMC) is working to help those residents keep their bellies full.
Years ago, MMUMC merged with another church that had been renting a commercial-grade kitchen to a caterer. They decided to put the kitchen to better use, partnering with The Campus Kitchens Project, a national nonprofit organization, to recover and distribute food to the needy.
“Our country produces enormous amounts of food waste,” says Rev. Dr. Charles Parker, senior pastor of MMUMC. “We address that issue by collecting food that would be pitched otherwise.”
Volunteers gather food from grocery stores and markets and bring it to MMUMC’s mission center, where a professional chef plans his menu based on what is acquired. Further volunteers help process and prepare the meals, which are distributed to a network of ministries throughout D.C.
Stephanie Quammen, the serving pillar coordinator at MMUMC, describes Campus Kitchen as a task accomplished by many hands.
“In the last academic year, almost 40,000 meals were served using over 53,000 pounds of recovered food,” Quammen says. “It was accomplished by teams that included almost 1,100 volunteers.”
According to Parker, the logistics of the program and the paperwork of tracking what food comes in and how it’s stored and prepared is a challenging task, but worth it. Apart from serving nutritious food to those in need and the “greening element” of reducing waste, Parker says the ministry helps develop volunteer leaders and stretch church members.
“It’s been a great blessing in that it gets us into parts of the city we wouldn’t normally get into,” Parker says. “Washington is a divided city and this gives our folks the opportunity to get out of their bubble and build partnerships.”
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METROPOLITAN MEMORIAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
Washington, D.C.
NationalChurch.org
