Our Newest Partner: Miriam’s Kitchen
A Subaru, jam-packed with food and supplies, arrived at our newest partner, Miriam's Kitchen, located in Foggy Bottom. KPC Buddhist Relief delivered 535 lbs of fresh produce, 100 lbs of rice, 100 flip-flops, and 288 hygiene, summer, and snack kits.
Miriam's Kitchen serves restaurant-grade breakfast and dinner to 180-250 people Monday through Friday. Each meal is at least 1,000 calories, because they know it may be their guests only meal of the day.
They serve approximately 8,000 individual meals monthly, and expect that number to jump significantly when a new housing facility walking distance to Miriam’s Kitchen opens soon. The end of SNAP benefits and the COVID rent moratorium have had a tremendous impact on the number of people being served. Every day, they go through 40 dozen eggs for breakfast and either 50-70 lbs of ground beef or 180 lbs of chicken for dinner.
Everyone is welcome for meals, no questions asked. And if a guest isn't comfortable in a dining hall setting, they can take a to-go box.
Miriam's Kitchen features cooking from many cultural traditions: Asian, Latino, African, Caribbean, to name a few, with a different culture featured monthly. To support such cultural sensitivity, KPC Buddhist Relief sources spices and food items specific to those cultures. For Caribbean month, they used curry pastes, hot sauce, applesauce and salad dressings they make from scratch.
To ensure guests see familiar-looking faces welcoming them, Chef Cheryl also hires staff that reflect their ethnic backgrounds.
KPC Buddhist Relief's summer, hygiene, and snack kits are also a big hit! Martha shared that the kits are much needed and are usually gone within the day.
But food is merely a gateway to many other services at Miriam's Kitchen.
After breakfast, guests can take advantage of case management services, including housing assistance, health care, legal and other supportive services.
Miriam’s Kitchen has a clothes closet, provides permanent supportive housing, offers canned foods to their housing residents and they advocate for their guests to the DC, state and local governments.
Recently, guests of Miriam's Kitchen testified before the Supreme Court as it considered making homelessness illegal.
They have an outreach program which is how they got involved in serving the people who were in the DC encampments.
Miriam’s Kitchen also partners with other nonprofits to provide legal services and health care on site.
We felt an instant kinship with Volunteer Coordinator, Martha Wolf and Executive Chef, Cheryl Bell - their passion for this work, their emphasis on honoring and respecting the guests and their heritage, and doing everything to make their guests feel valued as fellow human beings - so closely mirrors our own approach to this work. Chef Cheryl reminded us that many of us are just one paycheck or bad event away from a downward spiral that is hard to recover from.
The need is clearly great and we need you to help… please join us by becoming a friend of KPC Buddhist Relief.
