On a recent Saturday morning, dozens and dozens of families around the North Shore were in their kitchens, cooking up Hamburger Casserole, a classic mix of noodles, ground beef and that old standby, cream of mushroom soup. And it wasn’t a coincidence. They were cooking casseroles from a family favorite recipe of Diane Hawkins-Clark, volunteer coordinator for Saturday Night Meals, a program that provides at-risk families with a hot meal once a month Through a partnership with Pettengill House, the program marshals about 55 home-cooked casseroles to feed an average of 300 needy people each month.
“I love that image,” Hawkins-Clark says of the cooks all over the North Shore making the same meal at the same time. “It’s so powerful – it feels like such a community.”
Volunteers get the monthly recipe from Hawkins-Clark via email, and drop off a hot casserole or two in the basement of East Parish Church in Salisbury.
The operation runs like a well-oiled machine. An army of volunteers –as many as 60 some weeks – divides up the casseroles into individual servings, then packages them with salad, bread and dessert, and fans out across the community to deliver them.
It wasn’t always that easy to coordinate –the program has been growing steadily for 19 years – well before email and GPS made reaching volunteers and delivering meals much simpler, notes Newburyport resident Steve Fraser. He first came up with the idea as a way to assist people he calls the “hidden hungry” –initially focused on the transient people with limited cooking facilities who live in the motels along the beach in Salisbury during the winter.
It wasn’t always this big either. Fraser, who marks a good meal service by how few burns and cuts he gets, first planned to provide a hot meal at a local church. But after publicizing the event, cooking, recruiting volunteers and setting out tablecloths and candles, a grand total of one person showed up.
“He ate very well,” Fraser recalls with a laugh, adding that they quickly realized that delivering the hot meals might serve this high-risk community better. Now, people who use the food pantry at Pettengill House are invited to sign up, and volunteers there coordinate printing out the maps for the delivery. The number is capped at 300 – it is the maximum they can logistically manage out of the church kitchen.
Initially a project through Fraser’s church, Central Congregational in Newburyport, through the years it has grown to include volunteers from churches like Main Street Congregational in Amesbury, host East Parish, and Hope Church, but word of mouth also brings in people from the community, from sorority sisters from local colleges to high school students looking to fulfill a community service obligation. Volunteers range in age from 3 year olds, who help carry meals and open bags, to 85-year-old Bob Lewis, who can usually be found on dish duty. The reach of the program even attracted the attention of the American Red Cross of Northeast Massachusetts, which gave Saturday Night Meal its Community Hero award last month.
Local businesses are also big supporters – General Electric Company, the Swasey Fund and the Institution for Savings all provide money to purchase the sides and all the packaging, and Dianne’s Fine Desserts in Newburyport has donated the hundreds of sweet endings for the meals since the start.
Even after 19 years, the motivation for Fraser is still clear he says, recalling a young boy who once told his teacher he gets his dinner from the vending machines at the hotel. And another who started cheering when he saw a volunteer drop off a gallon of milk.
“The need hasn’t diminished,” he says. “It’s embarrassing to realize how much hunger there is around us – especially children. And how easy it is to make a difference.”
Saturday Night Meals will be preparing and delivering meals on Oct. 21 and Nov. 18 and on additional dates in the new year. To get involved, please contact Diane Hawkins-Clark at clarkkj@comcast.net.