With a good kitchen, your church can play an even greater role in the community, supporting people from all walks of life. Here’s how you can use your kitchen to help the homeless in your area.

Run a cookery class
Use your kitchen to offer homeless people, especially the young or vulnerable, a chance to learn vital cooking skills. From baking to basic meal preparation, your kitchen could enable people to learn life-changing lessons. Charitable contributions could pay for a teacher, or volunteers from the church community could lead different classes each month. It’s also a great service for those who are in temporary accommodation or newly housed after a long period of homelessness.

Become a go-to place for a meal
Whether you want to run a soup kitchen or offer something more substantial, use your kitchen to offer a regular meal to the homeless in your area. The size of your kitchen and budget will dictate what you can do, but having a set day when people can come by for something to eat will make a huge difference. If you do run a cookery class, you could even get your team of cooks to cater for this.

Cater for support groups
People are homeless for a variety of reasons and many would benefit from having somewhere to go to talk. Hosting this kind of support group with the added bonus of catering means people will get even more out of coming together. You could just offer drinks and cake or make a hot lunch or dinner, to help people bond and feel at home in the church environment.

Offer the space to homeless charities
Let local causes make use of your kitchen and run events, meals or support sessions from your church. If you’re not in a position to host such programmes yourselves, you could still support the community by making your kitchen available to those who can.

Host a Christmas lunch
The festive season is just around the corner and many people will be without somewhere warm to go for a meal on Christmas Day. Put your church’s kitchen to charitable use and host a lunch for the homeless community, to guarantee those in need of a good meal and some company on 25th December.

A good kitchen is becoming more of a fundamental requirement for churches, as local communities look to your building as a community hub. We offer a free consultation service to churches looking to install or upgrade a kitchen – to find out more, call us on 0844 809 9186.