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Every Tuesday night, between 250 and 350 neighbors come to our Food Pantry seeking a bag of groceries. We provide a nutritionally balanced grocery bag to each person, which includes fresh milk, bread and meat. We also offer a “no-kitchen” option with easy-to-fix items and pop-top lids for our neighbors who primarily live on the streets.
Our Community Kitchen provides a family-style meal for more than 120 neighbors each week. Teams of dedicated volunteers prepare and serve a hot entrée, vegetable, bread and often desert. The majority of our patrons reside within a twelve-block area but some travel from as far as the South Side for our meal and fellowship.
Several times a year, our dining hall is transformed into a four-star restaurant called the All Saints’ Café. At our Café, our neighbors enjoy choosing a gourmet multi-course meal from a specially prepared menu. Choices include wonderful delights such as prime rib, Oriental stir-fry and Greek chicken. They are also attended to by a wait staff and surrounded my music and entertainment.
We partner with Ravenswood School in hopes of ensuring a powerful future for young people in our neighborhood. We produce the “Reality Fair,” a three-dimensional manifestation of the popular board game Life. This virtual game teaches 8th graders practical life skills through choices and financial realities, and it helps students consider their futures. In our newest program, “focus:future,” mentors guide soon-to-be-graduating students through the stressful and competitive high school program application process.
In the coming year, RCS plans to reach out to businesses in Ravenswood and Uptown who are committed to ending hunger in our neighborhood. We intend to establish the Coalition to Fight Hunger, as a platform for this shared commitment.
At our final meeting of 2007, the RCS Board approved an examination into securing the retail space located on the northwest corner of Hermitage and Wilson for a future coffee shop that would be run by the organization. Much like our Community Kitchen and Food Pantry was a vision for the future for several years before the right set of fortunate circumstances made its creation a possibility, an RCS Coffeehouse is another element of the long range vision for building connections into and throughout our community.
We are an agency of Episcopal Charities and Community Services.
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