{"id":7974,"date":"2014-09-03T23:49:53","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T03:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=7974"},"modified":"2014-09-10T13:23:34","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T17:23:34","slug":"marthas-table-marks-10th-year-of-food-and-fellowship-in-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/marthas-table-marks-10th-year-of-food-and-fellowship-in-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Martha\u2019s Table marks 10th year of food and fellowship in community"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

10 years on, there\u2019s still always room to pull up a chair at Martha\u2019s Table. <\/p>\n

When the stoves are flipped back on after the summer hiatus, the outreach group based out of St. Andrew\u2019s Presbyterian Church on Mosley Street will mark a decade of providing food and fellowship to people in need throughout the community.<\/p>\n

September marks the beginning of Martha\u2019s Table\u2019s 10th year which began after looking for ways to fill in service gaps from CHATS \u2013 Community and Home Assistance to Seniors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought maybe we could start something here,\u201d explains long-time volunteer coordinator Helen Dawn. \u201cWe opened up the first day with no publicity or anything and we had 15 people here. Everything was fine. 15 or 20 people could be good, we thought, and then the next week we had 45! After that, we had 65 because word had gotten around the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since those early days, Martha\u2019s Table has become a destination. Thursday mornings on Victoria Street are characterised by heavy on-street parking as a steady stream of people flow into the church hall looking for fresh food and friendship.<\/p>\n

All of the work is done by volunteers, both inside and outside the church community, young and old, who always provide just enough elbow grease to make Martha\u2019s Table a well-oiled machine, with a menu that changes each week based on donations, with homemade soup being one particular constant.
\n\u201cOur original philosophy was we just wanted to feed the community who needed something to eat,\u201d says Ms. Dawn. \u201cIf you are hungry, you don\u2019t live well. If you don\u2019t live well, you don\u2019t add to the community. If we can feed you, then you\u2019ll add to this community of Aurora.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Over the last 10 years it has gotten better because now there are more people interacting. We have people with whom we send food down at the end of the day. We will send food home with people who are really in need, which might be three or four days\u2019 worth of food so they can survive. A lot of them are seniors. The pension doesn\u2019t go as far as you think it does, especially if you are a single person. That is just where it is at \u2013 we want to feed people.\u201d<\/p>\n

This \u201cwe\u201d can change from week to week, but more often than not Martha\u2019s Table is manned by a familiar corps of men and women. Anyone is welcome to come in and lend a hand, says Ms. Dawn. They particularly value the connection Martha\u2019s Table has with Holy Trinity School in Richmond Hill, which sends between eight and 10 student volunteers aged between 14 and 15 to support the group every other week.<\/p>\n

The kids bring food, help make sandwiches, prepare the desserts, and do just about everything that needs to be done. Everything that is prepared is available to patrons for $4, if they can afford it. If they can\u2019t, that is not a problem for Martha\u2019s Table.<\/p>\n

While the group relies on congregants to prepare their homemade soups, financial donations and revenue from meal tickets largely keep the operation afloat. Whatever is left over at the end of the day ultimately flows back into the community, says Ms. Dawn.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get whatever food we can buy, put that aside, pay for it, and whatever money is left over we give to Welcoming Arms, Yellow Brick House, the Canadian Mental Health Association, or wherever we feel there is a need or could help our people,\u201d she says. \u201cIn our last full year from September to June, we gave approximately $4,900 to other charities around Aurora.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facilities here at the church are paid for by the church congregation and none of the money that comes through the door [goes to that]. There are people who pay, some who can afford to pay, and some who can\u2019t afford to pay, and we just let it go at that, and [while] we do have to pay for the food there hasn\u2019t been a week where we haven\u2019t been able to cover the cost of food.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the crowd is cleared out after the weekly meal, Ms. Dawn says Martha\u2019s Table measures their success by the number of people \u201claughing, talking, smiling, and not bringing soup back!\u201d This fellowship, in turn, is something she says sustains them going forward, interacting, meeting friends they have not seen in a long time, and, in some cases, just getting out of the house. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor the next 10 years we\u2019re just going to be doing what we have been doing, make sure it keeps working, and make sure it keeps working the way it has been working!\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

10 years on, there\u2019s still always room to pull up a chair at Martha\u2019s Table. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-24C","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-30 13:40:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/2014-09-04-03.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}