Good hearts, good food, good deeds

Milledgeville’s own soup kitchen serves warm food with even warmer hearts

Every Tuesday morning since October 2009, Ann Bowen and a handful of volunteers prepare to serve Milledgeville’s homeless and underpriviledged at the only soup kitchen in the city, Café Central.

Bowen, Café Central’s coordinator, along with volunteers Peggy Sowell and Angela Johnson, arrive at Café Central a few minutes before 9 a.m. to prepare for lunch. They begin pulling tray after tray of home-cooked, hearty food from the refrigerator to warm in their handful of cookers, plating desserts donated from local grocery stores, setting the tables in the dining room with utensils and condiments, and joking over coffee.

As the morning passes, more volunteers arrive and get to work while hungry guests begin to fill the chairs and wait patiently for their meal. They are each greeted at the door by volunteer Joy Woods’ smile and welcoming words, “Find a place to sit, we’ll take care of you.”

A few minutes before 11 a.m., all the volunteers gather in the kitchen for a quick blessing. After “amen,” the food is served. In an organized system of rows and sections, the volunteers serve between 200-300 people every Tuesday. Without having to move from their seats, the people who come to Café Central enjoy endless beverages and as many plates of food as they’d like. When they finish, a designated volunteer clears the table and sets up for another group of people, and the system continues until the last person is satisfied.

After retiring from her job as an Allstate Insurance agent, Bowen helped her church’s pastor for a while by working as his secretary. According to Bowen, the Church Central’s location made it very accessible to many of Milledgeville’s homeless and needy, and they would come by the church asking for food or money. “So we bought instant soup and peanut butter and jelly,” Bowen said, “and that’s where it started.”

Bowen and her pastor definitely realized the need for a soup kitchen in Milledgeville.

“I don’t know how we make it work. We have no resources, but we just keep doing this. We spent all of our personal money making sure everyone got fed–miraculously people started stepping up to the plate,” Bowen said. “We served our first meal to 17 people, and now we serve hundreds.”

Café Central operates entirely on donations and volunteers, and Bowen is often astounded by the generosity she witnesses. “The miracles we have seen here would blow your mind. We’ll be sitting here wondering how in the world we are going to put food on these plates, and someone will walk through the door and hand me a check for $400. It’s amazing.”

Many of the volunteers develop friendships with the guests at Café Central. “We reach out other ways than food,” said volunteer Mary Ann Dellinger. “I’m so proud, we try to reach everyone.”

Senior outdoor education major Jen Clinton recently began volunteering at Café Central. “I just started three weeks ago, I heard about it from a friend,” she said. “I just have a heart for people, and this is the only place to get a hot meal.”

Café Central serves from a group of menus, and the selection each week depends on what supplies, resources, and money they have available. For example, they prepare meals like spaghetti with garlic bread and salad. Bowen would like to also serve lunch on Thursdays, but the kitchen at Café Central lacks a working stove, making it difficult enough to manage their meals on Tuesdays.

“We are the only soup kitchen in Milledgeville and we don’t even really have a kitchen. We don’t even have a stove that works. I think it’s really incredible,” Bowen said.

Café Central would benefit most from donations of money and the supplies they use the most–like vegetable oil, Country Time lemonade mix, gallon-sized tea bags, sugar, and pepper–as well as more volunteers. Students are especially welcome to help out at Café Central and get more involved with the community.

“The most amazing thing to me is not the people who come here to eat, but the people who work here,” Bowen said. “It changes our lives.”