Soup kitchen celebrates 40th anniversary

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on October 2, 2024.

Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman A group of volunteers serve lunch in an assembly line style Tuesday at the Lethbridge Soup Kitchen.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

The Lethbridge Soup Kitchen has been serving meals to those in need for 40 years and they celebrated their milestone with many volunteers, donors, suppliers and staff Tuesday night.

Bill Ginther, executive director of the Soup Kitchen, shared with the Herald some of the history and highlights of the last four decades of serving those in need.

“On Oct. 1, 1984 two ladies noticed some men sitting on the steps of a local church. They invited them into for a bowl of soup and that’s where the name soup kitchen comes from,” said Ginther.

He said after that they arranged with a pastor of a local church to be able to use their kitchen twice a week to serve soup and a bun for those in need.

“Tuesdays and Thursdays they would serve a light lunch of soup and a bun or something like that and then the ladies decided that we should do this a bit more and over the years evolved into where we are,” said Ginther.

 He explained that at the beginning they were serving mostly soup from Monday to Saturday to about 40 people.

 “I came onboard as executive director in July of 2017, and we saw some real growth. We do three meals a day every day, except Sundays when we serve a brunch and an evening meal and we are serving up to 150 people per meal, per day,” said Ginther.

He said they have also grown as an organization and they went from three staff members to 20 staff members who work part-time.

“We also have around 800 volunteers, we are really fortunate to have that many people wiling to help us out. We have tremendous support from the local community, both with finances and food,” said Ginther.

He said they also help other organizations with food donations as there is plenty of food but there is a distribution problem.

“We are much bigger than we appear, but we just keep doing this every day. So today we celebrate and our theme is “celebrating 40 years of God’s goodness” as we are a church-based and christian organization,” said Ginther.

His words were echoed by Cheryl Neufeld, a volunteer with the Soup Kitchen who said she volunteers with members of her church on a monthly basis.

“For the last three years I have been helping volunteer with the All-Saints Parish group. We come on the first Tuesday of every month for lunch,” said Neufeld.

She said for her it is a blessing to be able to serve the community and she really enjoys the people she volunteers with.

 Neufeld added that through her work as the activities coordinator for Palliser International Student Program she has been able to show some of their international students what is like to volunteer at the Soup Kitchen.

“When I invite my international students to come with me, I tell them the first thing we are doing is changing someone’s life today, we are changing people’s lives by helping and supporting them with great respect and grace,” said Neufeld.

To be able to continue doing that and now that the shelter is expanding, Ginther said they will need to expand along with it.

“We are trying to be proactive, so we are adding a 60 by 30 addition to which will start as soon as the final building permits are in place so that should be soon,” said Ginther.

He explained the expansion will be for the dinning area, not the kitchen itself. He said they will be opening up a space that it is being used as storage of non-perishable food items at the moment, to be able to accommodate more tables.

“That will add approximately 36 spots and then the new area will be used to store the things we need and use for the day to day and we will also have a loading bay as well,” said Ginther.

He said to pay for this expansion they will be using funds donated by very generous donors from the community.