Food for thought... Students shop, cook, & eat with homeless

SHOPPING: URI 101 Student Alithea Bee (center), shops with classmates before preparing a meal to share with homeless residents of the Welcome House.

COOKING: Student Scott Kelley and his fellow URI 101 classmates prepare a salad.

Food for thought... Students shop, cook, & eat with homeless

University of Rhode Island freshman Alithea Bee didn’t want to go. She had better things to do. After all, it was late Friday afternoon and she could be with her friends.

Instead, Bee and her five classmates were asked to shop, cook, and share a meal with the homeless who are residents of Welcome House, an emergency residential shelter in Peace Dale.

The exercise was part of Bee’s URI 101 class taught by Mike Kittredge, a graduate student in the college student personnel program. (Professor Lynn McKinney, associate dean of the College of Human Science and Services runs the same exercise with his 101 class.) Designed to help new students get to know one another and the resources of the University, all URI 101 classes have a community service component supported by the Feinstein Enriching America Program.

With the $80 they had raised, the group descended on the market with a planned menu for 25 and tossed chicken, potatoes and more into a shopping cart. Arriving at McKinney’s home with the groceries, the group quickly went to work cooking and mashing potatoes, preparing broccoli, creating lemon pepper chicken, a salad, and apple pie.

The students then drove to the Welcome House and, sitting down with its residents, ate the meal they had prepared.

“We talked with them and they told us of the mistakes they had made in their lives,” said Bee. When asked if she would do it again, Bee said she would. “You get a sense of helping when you do something like this.”

“Hunger and poverty are important issues,” said Kittredge. “I think meeting people who are homeless face-to-face gave the students a broader perspective of what it is like to be hungry. It puts a human face on it.”

By Jan Wenzel

SHARING: Students and residents of the Welcome House share and enjoy the meal that the students prepared.