Vegetables Keep a Cortez Soup Kitchen Dishing

Hope’s Kitchen, an arm of the First United Methodist Church of Cortez, serves 300 meals each week to local residents experiencing food insecurity, including families and children who don’t receive free school meals on Fridays. While the soup kitchen has been limited to cold “to-go” meals since the coronavirus pandemic, recent kitchen renovations set the stage for the group to resume serving hot meals. There was just one problem. While Hope’s Kitchen holds a yearly fundraiser to help purchase protein for its meals, the organization has relied on dedicated supporters to subsidize the other ingredients it uses, a model that has become more challenging as some of the soup kitchen’s long-time donors have passed away. So, one staff member reached out to LOR with an idea to buy a year’s supply of vegetables. LOR’s funding will help Hope’s Kitchen purchase a variety of canned vegetables, bridging the gap so that Cortez’s most vulnerable residents can access hot, nutritious meals while the kitchen rebuilds its donor network.