The Thursday Community Night Dinners have been a great success so far! And I’ve heard some wonderings and questions, and I know many of you are curious just how this is working, so here we go:
Just how are we paying for these dinners?
Folks are wondering, how is this funded. We didn’t have a pre-existing budget line or fund to support this program, but I believed it to be something really worthwhile to get going. So I have been personally purchasing most of the food for the dinners in order to get them started. We are collecting donations at the dinners, which are going into the Community Life Fund and will begin to pay for the costs going forward.
Here are the costs and donations so far:
| Cost (currently staff out of pocket) | Donations Received | |
| 9/15/22 | $300 | $105 |
| 9/22/22 | $118 | $157 |
| 9/29/22 | $116 | $137 |
| 10/6/22 | $155 | $248 |
Who is the dinner for?
Anyone! All are welcome to come to dinner, OUUC folks, friends, family, visitors, any community member that would like to.
Are people coming?
Yes! It’s been great to see folks enjoying each others’ company and building community. We had 42 people at the first dinner, then 25 for soup night, then 35 folks, and then last week we had more than 60 people!
Is this sustainable?
I believe it is. There are many of us who really enjoy feeding people, and there are many of us who enjoy eating! So that’s a perfect match. If you are one who loves to feed people and would join me in planning and leading this effort, I’d love to have a Community Dinner Team work with me! And as we collect donations for the community life fund, it will start to even out financially as well.
How else can we help?
We’ve got three easy ways you can volunteer to help with dinner. There is a prep crew that comes in at 3:30 and sets up all the tables and chairs and helps make the dinner. They don’t need to bring anything, all the tools and food is there and there’s a plan to follow. And it’s super fun to hang out and cook together in the kitchen!
Another way to help is to bring cookies for the dessert table. These folks just bake at home and come with treats at 5:30. And the final way to help is to be on the clean-up crew at 6:30. We have to do the dishes and put away the tables and chairs.
A huge thank you to the folks who have volunteered at these first four dinners:
Diana Finch
Sally and Bob Brennand
Shelley Ferer
Melanie Ransom
Diane Daly
James Browne
Carol Williams
John Gear
Holly Porter
Ginny Taylor
Dan Donohue
Anne Radford
Sally Alhadeff
Beth Johnson
Lee Doyle
Gail Wrede
Liz Clement
Beth Henriquez
Maggie Post
Lucas Morse-Morrill
Connie Ruhl
Martha Nicoloff