A Chatham church is marking 20 years of serving up breakfast for people in need.
First Presbyterian Church served its first Saturday Breakfast on October 21, 2001
According to Minister Mike Maroney, the initiative took off fairly quickly, with an average of 60 people being served every Saturday for the first few years. From there, Maroney said more and more people started to attend.
"It quickly grew to the point where in a few years, we were serving anywhere from 120-150 guests. A couple of years after that, we would get up to 170-180 guests. Everything from families with small children, young adults, senior citizens," he explained. "Sometimes people would come simply because they like the company."
Maroney said the church always made sure to focus on providing nutritious meals with a variety of options for people. He added that the goal was to create a hospitable and welcoming environment, where guests can sit down to eat their breakfast.
According to Maroney, it takes between 15 to 20 volunteers every Saturday to make the breakfast possible and on average, they serve over 150 meals. He added that not everyone who attends is necessarily in need of a meal, but many come for the social aspect and to enjoy the company.
One of the biggest changes Maroney said he's seen over the years is that more and more younger residents are coming through the door.
"We have seen more teenagers come in on their own, sometimes in groups, certainly young adults. I have seen people that have just had difficulties with losing their job and gone into difficult situations so they access the breakfast. Just the breadth of people using the breakfast has increased so that we literally have from babies all the ways to senior citizens," he said.
In 2016, First Presbyterian Church partnered with the Municipality of Chatham-Kent to offer counselling services and assistance to the guests. In addition, once a month a representative from the Chatham-Kent Community Health Centre also comes in on a monthly basis to provide health-related information.
"We have people from the municipality coming in. They can arrange for things to happen," Maroney explained. "They've been able to do things like connecting people with doctors. If they're isolated and they don't have that many means to do things, perhaps even computers, our volunteers from the municipality have been able to help them with a number of things."
According to Maroney, the team originally got the Saturday Breakfast program up and running by using the interest that had acquired on a bequest that the church had for a while.
For the first few years, Maroney said that it cost around $7,000 a year to run the program. Now, he said it costs over $15,000 a year to operate. Over the past two decades, he estimates that over $250,000 has been spent and over 100,000 meals have been served.
He said the program continues to run thanks to several different sources including donations from the congregation, donations from local businesses and memorial donations as well as grants.
"We, in one way for another, pay for it lock stock and barrel. That includes all the supplies, cooking supplies, all the food, all the things we have to do," he said.
Over the course of 20 years, Maroney said the church has only missed a few Saturdays. The program was also briefly halted at the start of the pandemic. It has since resumed, but meals are now take-out only instead of guests being able to sit down. The church also had to opt to serve breakfast every other Saturday because of fewer volunteers during the pandemic.
Maroney said he misses the interaction, but still makes sure that guests are provided with a personable experience.
"Even right now, just at the door, I'm still talking to our guests," he said. "They tell me about the difficulties that they're having and God bless them, even though some of them are going through incredible difficulties, they still say 'thank you for this meal.' As small as a thing as it is, they'll say to me 'thank you, pastor, for what you guys are doing because this is a meal we can count on.'"
According to Maroney, the church plans to commemorate the 20-year milestone with an anniversary service.