Cathedral Community Cares (CCC) The Cathedral has always worked against suffering and inequality. Cathedral Community Cares grew out of early efforts to combat AIDS and was formally established by the Congregation of St. Saviour in the early 1990s. CCC continues that mission through preventive poverty services, education, and advocacy, specifically targeting health and hunger.
We Can Provide
DEAN MORTON Service is at the very heart of scripture. Service is not just something we do. Service is what we are. It isn’t a profession, a hobby, a part-time activity. Service is being. BISHOP DIETSCHE Outreach brings benefits to those in need, to those who help, and to the community as a whole. MARSHA RA It is inevitable that when people regularly share the Eucharist they will want to respond to pain in the world. In 1981, several members of the worshipping community asked permission to start a homeless shelter on the grounds. The Episcopal Church Women group opened a soup kitchen in the Undercroft. Those programs live on today in Cathedral Community Cares. KALIE KAMARA CCC is the social services program part of the Cathedral. We provide services to alleviate poverty. I’m the outreach coordinator here. I work every day all day to help people who really need help. THOMAS PERRY There
are three of us. Whoever gets here first opens up. Usually there are two or three people waiting either outside or in the Cathedral. They are looking for help with food stamps, housing, job referrals. They need a place to sleep or sometimes, especially if the weather is colder, a jacket.
MURRY STEGELMANN I have been a Trustee at the Cathedral for eight years. A hundred thousand people a month come through the Cathedral. Our mission is making this a place that those people leave feeling invigorated, energized, and craving more. The Cathedral should only be a home base. It’s not just what we do here, it’s what we do that multiplies and spreads out into the world.
CCC staff and volunteers Thomas Perry, Marva Kennedy, and Kalie Kamara at work at the Clothing Closet. Not pictured: Robert Finn. 202
BILL BAKER The Cathedral has always been a moral place that sheds light on the most critical things that get buried in a society, the human lives that have often been ignored.
KALIE KAMARA We have a Soup Kitchen on Sundays. We serve breakfast around 10 am and lunch at 12:30 pm. Clients know about us through different soup kitchens, or shelters, or food pantries. It’s almost like a community, like its own world of people who are surviving off the different programs. If you see our soup kitchen, there are women and sometimes there are children, but you will be amazed at how much of it is black men living from shelter to shelter. About 150 to 200 people come. There are times it gets really crowded, sometimes it gets to 250. We try not to turn people away. We have to be creative. TOM FEDOREK The soup kitchen has huge pots
for cooking. It felt like “Jack and the Beanstalk in the Giant’s kitchen.” You know, you hear about the Holy Spirit and it’s kind of an abstract concept. But the camaraderie of the people working in the Soup Kitchen is what I think of when I think about the Holy Spirit. That’s the spirit there.
ISADORA WILKENFELD New Yorkers are hungry. Nearly one-sixth of our neighbors live in poverty, and many struggle to provide themselves and their families with adequate food. ROBERT FINN The numbers of those seeking food at the Cathedral Soup Kitchen and other foodbanks around the country have been going up since 2008. It would be impossible for us to meet this need without all of the volunteers who help out. MARSHA RA Sunday, into the pantry to get supplies for today’s lunch: 220 pounds of ground beef; 50 pounds of potato flakes; 30 pounds of cheese; 15 cases of canned fruits and vegetables; 50 pounds of sugar; 15 pounds of flour, honey, raisin, nuts; 10 pounds of butter; and all the necessary utensils, urns, and casserole dishes. I learned to cook a lot of really big things. Egg Foo Young for 200. THOMAS PERRY We’re
serving food in the same building at the same time that church services are happening. The clergy usually stop in during meal times so it really feels like we are just an extension of what is happening upstairs. 203
