Cooking and eating in community: Dave’s story

For most people, Mondays are rough.

For Dave, it’s the best day of the week.

Every Monday morning, he heads downstairs to Soul Kitchen – the industrial kitchen and community dining room on the first floor of his building. 

Dave is a regular volunteer and he knows what to do. He gets straight to work. 

On Monday mornings Soul Kitchen receives a big food donation from the IGA on Robson Street. Dave digs in to help Levi, the Soul Kitchen chef, sort the food into various categories. 

They set aside food for Levi to prepare meals throughout the week for the hundreds of residents who will come for a hot breakfast on Tuesday, soup on Wednesday and a hearty lunch on Thursday. 

Each week, Levi and volunteers like Dave serve 300 meals at Soul Kitchen, turning food donations into meals that nourish the body and feed the soul. 

Other donations are sorted into smaller bags for residents to pick up from the “free table.” These are usually grocery items that may be out of reach for many — things like milk, cheese, fresh produce, and sometimes meat. 

Dave lives in Karis Place, one of four More Than a Roof Society residences in Downtown Vancouver. While food security has always been a concern for More than a Roof residents, we’ve seen the situation go from bad to worse in the last few years. Skyrocketing food costs make it even harder for people to stretch their budgets to the end of the month. 

At the end of his volunteer shift, Dave knows that Levi will make sure he walks away with a full grocery bag – enough to help feed himself and the three neighbours he cooks for every night. Without it, Dave knows he’d run out of food. 

While Dave is always impressed with what Levi can do with the food donations from IGA and from the Earls Test Kitchen nearby, he also knows  it’s not enough. 

Thankfully, our community of donors generously support Soul Kitchen so Levi can purchase additional food.  Without this compassionate support, Levi couldn’t meet the diverse and growing needs of this community. 

Dave works in construction as much as he can. But he doesn’t get work every day, and so he gives his time to the Soul Kitchen and to his neighbours, investing in the community he’s called home for seven years. 

Dave remembers what it’s like to not have a home. He was once homeless. For a while his employer let him crash in the warehouse, but that did little more than keep out the rain. 

At Karis Place, he’s found more than a roof, he’s found a community of people who care for him and who he can care for in return. He found his way back to cooking too – something he enjoys and believes can bring people together. 

“It’s like night and day from how I used to live,” Dave shares. “Now I always have a home to come back to and a meal in front of me. I have friends and people to pray with me during hard times.”