Soup Kitchens Research Articles

On eating’s pleasure of women of low-income socioeconomic status in Petare, Caracas, Venezuela

Eating is a key biological, social, cultural, historical, geographical, agricultural, religious and hedonic act. Whether the pleasure on eating can be developed from scarcity might be controversial, as the development of taste involves the exposure to a variety of foods during critical periods of time and will be associated to what is available for the people in their daily lives. This study aimed to study the preferred foods and dishes, of women within low and very low-income settings in Caracas, Venezuela during the month of June 2022, the willingness to grow ingredients at home and/or community gardens and what would they cook if money restriction was not a problem. Interviews were implemented by focus group to 18 pregnant and lactating women and community workers (women) on soup kitchens established in two very low-income settings in Eastern Caracas, Venezuela, to fulfil the aims of this study, and to understand the characteristics of the preferences. In general, the results obtained show absence of traditional Venezuelan complex dishes that have been replaced by foods that are either basic in its components, have international references, and can be prepared with foods that people have access to, thus the culinary memoires of the future younger generations can be compromised as there is an absence of those in the imaginary and dreams of the family mothers and cooking volunteers whose dream is to enrich with animal protein a basic carbohydrate already available.

CAPADOCIAN PATRISTIC FATHERS AND FAITH TOURISM

Kapadokya Türkiye’nin önemli inanç turizmi potansiyeline sahip bölgelerinden biridir. Bölge Erken Hıristiyanlık dönemine ait çok sayıda kilise, manastır, şifahane, aşevleri ve eğitim kurumlarına sahiptir. Bu kurumların oluşmasında üç önemli Patristik Baba olarak anılan; Basil, Nyssa’lı Gregorius ve Nazianzus’lu Gregorıus’un eğitimleri, fikirleri ve uygulamaları etkili olmuştur. Çalışma için Kapadokya Patristik Babalarının seçilme nedenlerinde biri de; Doğulu Ortodoks ve Batılı Katolik Hıristiyan otoriteleri tarafından Patristik babaların en önemlileri olarak tanınmış olmaları ve adlarına özel gün kutlaması olmasıdır. Çalışmanın amacı; Kapadokya Patristik Babalarının Hıristiyanlığın Anadolu’da yayıldığı dönemde, hangi görüş ve uygulamalar ile önderlik ettikleri, Ekümenlik Konsüllerindeki rolleri, Kapadokya’nın önemli bir inanç merkezi olmasına katkıları ile eğitimleri, aileleri ve yaşam tarzlarını araştırmaktır. Çalışmada Patristik Kapadokya Babalarının yaşadığı coğrafi, siyasi, sosyal ve inanç iklimi de dikkate alınmıştır. Bu amaçla konu; kavramsal çerçevede otobiyografi kitapları, makale, yazılı ve sözlü kaynaklardan yararlanarak araştırılmıştır. Çalışmanın, Kapadokya inanç turizminin çok yönlü tanıtılmasına, Turist rehberlerine ve alan yazına katkı sunacağı düşünülmektedir. Anahtar Sözcükler: İnanç Turizmi, Kapadokya Azizleri, Hıristiyanlık.

Home Environment, Socio-cultural Characteristics, and Nutrition Knowledge of Users of a Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry

The present cross-sectional study examined the home environment, socio-cultural characteristics, and nutrition knowledge of 222 clients of a soup kitchen and food pantry. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, Multidimensional Home Environment Scale, and Nutrition Knowledge Scale. The food pantry population consisted of more women, Blacks, Hispanics, and older clients than did those from the soup kitchen. Soup kitchen clients also exhibited lower socioeconomic status, and were mostly homeless, as compared to those of the food pantry. Both groups had a low level of nutrition knowledge (55%). Furthermore, most of the food pantry recipients were non-smokers and non-alcohol-drinkers, as compared to about half of the soup kitchen participants, who had lower availability of healthy foods at home and 50.9% of them consumed American foods. Thus, future research is essential to assess the impact of the home environment, socio-cultural influences, and nutrition knowledge on diet quality and food security of food recipients in the U.S.

SOCIO-CULTURAL CONTEXT AND SPATIAL EVOLUTION OF KALKANDELEN HARABATI BABA LODGE

The Harabati Baba Lodge settlement, significant religious center, is located in the province of Tetovo, west of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. The settlement has recognized as the considerable place in the field of culture, arts and crafts thanks to its dervishes as well. Therefore, not only it essentially consists of public spaces with socio-cultural functions but also there are places of worship and for accommodation that require privacy. The Lodge settlement, with high courtyard walls and four monumental gates, emerges as a sample that representing an extensive and fragmented site planning existing in the Bektashi Lodges in the late period in Balkans. In this context, the Shadirvan, as a rarely seen sample in Balkans with a fascinating timber ceiling with its ornaments, the Soup kitchen with a semi-open summer place, the Guesthouse, a mansion with an open sofa on the upper floor, the two-storeyed Hotel building (former Military Hall), and (former Barn) Restaurant can be mentioned as the public spaces of Lodge Settlement. On the other hand, ‘Meydan’ as worship space with a low dome inside, a preparation space, the Fatma House with a hand-drawn decoration similar to Skopje Alaca Mosque, the Dervish House, constructed of rubble stone and mudbrick, and Harabati Baba and Sersem Ali Baba Shrines, similar to Seljuk and Ottoman examples in terms of architectural tradition can be considered as the places that have been privatized. Within the scope of this article, the spatial pattern of the Harabati Baba Lodge settlement and structures has been discussed in the historical context. Periodic socio-cultural divergencies and spatial transformations have been revealed on the basis of information obtained from written records, historical sources and archives, visual materials, old photographs, and traces from the buildings, through applying comparative study and architectural necessity criteria. The Tekke settlement with its landscape was scrutinized in four leading periods based on comparative studies on similar period features, building typologies, and architectural requirements. Harabati Baba Lodge might have been built in 958/1551 by Sersem Ali Baba, who is known to be the Bektashi father. In this period, the population of Tetovo, which was a small town in the second half of the 15th century, and the Muslim population in the town increased with the activities of Bektashi dervishes. This foundation period was continued until the arrival of Harabati Baba, known as the second founder, in the second half of the 18th century. The second period can be considered as the period of Recep Pasha, the administrator in Tetovo, due to renovation and restoration of the structures in the lodge. In the 19th century, it is stated that the dervishes, who were exiled and escaped after the Janissary Corps and the Bektashi convents had been closed, came to Balkans and that the Lodge was used as a military base. The third period covers the period between the death of Recep Pasha in 1822 and the extensive restoration/repair interventions in 1967. The fourth period (1967-present day) comprises the late interventions and the first official restoration.

KULIA KERJA LAPANGAN TEMATIK MENDUKUNG MBKM MAHASISWA INDO GLOBAL MANDIRI MENDAPING PARA TUNAWISMA BERTAHAN HIDUP PADA PERKUMPULAN SIKH DI AUSTRALIA BARAT

This study aims to find information on the factors that cause homelessness in Western Australia and efforts to overcome these factors by using the interview method. In this study, researchers conducted interviews with 20 homeless people with managers/organizers, instructors, and inmates. This interview aims to obtain research information, namely about the guidance applied, the methods used, the motivating and inhibiting factors, as well as efforts to overcome the obstacles followed by the provision of food on Moore Street which was obtained from the soup kitchen or bakery. The findings in this study, in the life of the homeless, it can be seen that the occurrence of homeless people and beggars can be divided into two causal factors, namely internal factors and external factors. Internal factors include lazy, unwilling to work, not mentally strong, physical or psychological disabilities. While external factors include social, cultural, economic, educational, environmental, religious and geographical factors.

Communication Lake

Communication Lake

Osmanlı Dönemi Tokat Rüstem Çelebi Camii Vakıfları

Tokat is one of the oldest cities in Anatolia, which was home to many ancient civilizations. In the city of Tokat, which entered into the Turkish domination at the late XIth century, a large number of religious, social, economic, and cultural artifacts such as mosques, small mosques, seminary schools, soup kitchens, lodges, inns, public baths, and tombs were constructed during the Danismendid, Seljukid, and Ottoman periods. The fact that Tokat is on the east-west and south-north road route in Anatolia, having a rich socio-economic potential with its mild climate and fertile agricultural lands has a great role in bringing these works into the body. In addition, the fact that half of the 70 Muslim neighborhoods in the period 1455-1574 had the names of mosques and masjids reflects the religious identity of the city. Thanks to this rich socio-economic potential, the functioning of religious, social, cultural and economic monuments that have been established in Tokat has been made possible with the help of waqf funds.
 In this article, Rustem Çelebi Mosque waqfs will be discussed as an case study among the rich foundation works available in Tokat during the Ottoman period. Although there are some individual studies about this mosque waqfs, these studies do not examine the waqf revenues of this mosque from the beginning to the present day. Waqf revenues are vital for the mosque to continue its function. This mosque is one of 17 mosques built in the city center of Tokat between XII and XXth centuries and was probably built in the second half of the XVth century. In the following periods, it has undergone some repairs and has survived to the present day. Modest waqf funds have been allocated by the founder for the maintenance and repair of the mosque and the salaries of its duties. In addition, some beneficiaries have established additional foundations for the mosque. The aim of the study is to contribute to the socio-cultural history of Tokat by addressing the foundations of Rustem Çelebi Mosque in all aspects.

Encouraging service learning and entrepreneurial thinking: PB&J sandwiches in a managerial accounting course

This paper describes an easy-to-implement service learning project developed to enhance the coverage of costing concepts in an introductory Managerial Accounting course. The course-specific assignment utilizes an entrepreneurial scenario which requires students to examine the viability of opening a sandwich stand in the student union. Students actively gather cost data for their business venture by preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches which are then donated to a local soup kitchen. Comparison of scores on pre- and post-tests suggests that the service learning assignment enhances students’ understanding of key managerial accounting concepts. More specifically, improvements in mean post-test scores proved significantly higher in the experimental group after completion of the service learning activity than in the control group. Feedback further suggests that students appreciated the opportunity to engage in service learning by helping others less fortunate and that the project encouraged them to think entrepreneurially.

Housing characteristics of crack cocaine users in Northeast Brazil, 2011-2013.

We compared sociodemographic characteristics, substance use patterns, sexual behavior, use of health services, and criminal records of homeless vs. domiciled users. Data are from the Brazilian National Survey on Crack Use. A discriminant model and correspondence analysis cross-compared characteristics of users according to their housing status. The logistic model revealed associations between "living in the streets" and female gender and intermittent work. "Homelessness" was also associated with the use of tobacco and "oxi" in the previous 30 days, reliance on soup kitchens, low access to public mental health services, and arrests in the previous year. Correspondence analysis highlighted the spatial proximity of the variables as follows: "having traded sex for drugs", "informal work", "age 31 years or older", "access to public mental health services", "problems with law enforcement", and female gender with homeless crack users. People who smoke crack cocaine in Northeast Brazil are seldom studied. Their profiles, stratified according to their housing conditions, show subgroups with specific characteristics. While domiciled users have access to specialized clinics, homeless users basically reported access to free food and harm reduction services.

Žensko dobrodelno delovanje v 19. stoletju: primer goriškega Gospejnega društva v podporo revežem

This article deals with the activity of the most important charitable association in the Land of Gorizia and Gradisca during the Austro-Hungarian period. The Ladies Society in Aid of the Poor, founded in 1869, united the efforts of noblewomen and wealthy burghers to help the poor Gorizia population by using their influence, financial resources, and services. Its members provided various forms of assistance (soup kitchen, home care, charity fairs and events), with which they actively and significantly facilitated the public efforts of the authorities in curbing poor social conditions. Women of different national, socio-economic, and religious backgrounds established themselves in the association.

"Hurry up and wait": Stigma, Poverty, and Contractual Citizenship.

The emergence of welfare contractualism in the United States in the 1970s marked a shift from viewing welfare as an entitlement to viewing welfare as a right to be earned through work. Combined with the continual degradation of labor markets since the 1970s, the rise of neoliberal ideology emphasizing individualism, and the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the devolved welfare system – most often managed by a myriad of social service nonprofits – has exacerbated the difficulties of the poor. Scholars have noted, for instance, the loss of civil rights and the proliferation of administrative burdens – including incessant waiting – with which poor people seeking aid are increasingly faced. But “contractual citizenship,” I argue, has not just remade relations between the poor and the state. Rather, as a diffuse cultural ethos, contractual citizenship has also remade relations between and amongst the poor themselves, exacerbating stigmatization, distancing, and denigration. Drawing upon an ethnography of a soup kitchen based in Syracuse, New York, I argue that as a consequence of contractual citizenship, prospective recipients of aid and the poor more broadly adapt their behavior to appear as deserving, worthy citizens and, simultaneously, externally defame their peers for their lesser behaviors. Those who take maximum advantage of free resources – such as attending multiple emergency food programs and taking more than one plate of food – are often deemed by other poor recipients of aid as greedy, ungrateful, and selfish. Thus, the repetitious and time-consuming nature of interacting with the state for basic resources – such as housing or welfare – is further complicated by this intraclass stigma. These findings not only shed light on the challenges of building solidarity amongst the poor but show how political and economic shifts influence how poor people interact with each other and the state.

Feeding the Community: London’s Immigrants and Their Food, 1650–1800

Abstract Early modern London was a diverse metropolis, but we know little about the social lives of its migrant communities, especially how they fed themselves. Influenced by recent anthropology and sociology of food, migration, and ethnicity, this article examines specific communal food practices of two minority communities in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Sephardic Jews and French Protestant refugees. Rather than studying how unusual foods marked these migrants as different, it explores how mundane food matters shaped social relations within these communities. The first section analyzes the system of shechita, the ritual slaughter of meat by Jews, by drawing on records of community leadership, account books, and printed texts on the subject. The second section examines two institutions established to feed the Huguenot poor, a soup kitchen in Spitalfields and the hospital known as “La Providence,” both of which left extensive records of administration. Though different, the case studies show how migrant groups, through specific food practices, constructed and experienced community within the capital. The article adds to our knowledge of migrant lives in the city and highlights the richness of institutional records from within these communities. It also suggests how food history can connect minority stories to British history more broadly.

Achieving equitable food security: How can food bank mobile pantries fill this humanitarian need

Hunger occurs in all locations around the globe, from developing to developed countries. In fact, there were over 37 million food insecure individuals (those without access to consistent nutritious food) in the United States in 2018, and this number increased in recent years due to the COVID pandemic. In many countries, food banks are used to consolidate food donations from individuals or government agencies and then provide that food to local partner agencies (such as food pantries and soup kitchens), who distribute it to food insecure individuals. As nonprofit humanitarian organizations, food banks strive to achieve geographic equity in their food distribution, so one area (or county) is not favored over others. However, food banks also want to maximize food distribution with their limited budgets. This equitable distribution versus cost balancing act is made even more challenging since food banks experience extreme variability in both the supply (donations) of food and partner agencies' capacity to deliver food to the food insecure. Our paper focuses on how mobile pantry programs, additional food bank storage capacity, and improved partner agency capacity can be utilized to address this supply and distribution capacity variability while considering food expiration times. Mobile pantry programs allow food banks to distribute food directly to the food insecure by sending their own trucks and employees to locations where food is most needed. Although all three of these approaches can be helpful, our results show that mobile pantries are a more effective approach to achieve high equity levels. This is especially true in the case of produce with relatively short expiration times. We also find that utilizing mobile pantry programs can increase equitable partner agency distribution considerably, because even small amounts of mobile pantry distribution in under‐served areas allow for more equitable partner agency distribution in areas with available partner agency distribution capacity. Our research is based on data from our partner food bank, but our modeling and extensive sensitivity analysis should be applicable to many food banks with a similar collection and distribution structure.

A structured community engagement strategy to support uptake of TB active case-finding.

In Lima, Peru, a mobile TB screening program ("TB Móvil") was implemented in high TB prevalence districts to increase TB screening. Community engagement activities to promote TB Móvil were simultaneously conducted. To describe a structured, theory-driven community engagement strategy to support the uptake of TB Móvil. We adapted Popular Opinion Leader (POL), an evidence-based social networking intervention previously used in Peru to promote HIV testing, for TB Móvil. Community health workers, women who run soup kitchens, and motorcycle taxi drivers served as "popular opinion leaders" who disseminated information about TB Móvil in everyday conversations, aided by a multi-media campaign. Performance indicators of POL included the number/characteristics of persons screened; number of multimedia elements; and proportion of persons with abnormal radiographs hearing about TB Móvil before attending. Between February 2019 and January 2020, 63,899 people attended the TB Móvil program at 210 sites; 60.1% were female. The multimedia campaign included 36 videos, 16 audio vignettes, flyers, posters, community murals and "jingles." Among attendees receiving an abnormal chest X-ray suggestive of TB, 48% (6,935/14,563) reported hearing about TB Móvil before attending. POL promotes the uptake of TB Móvil and should be considered as a strategy for increasing TB screening uptake.

Understanding the challenges faced by Michigan’s family farmers: race/ethnicity and the impacts of a pandemic

Michigan is a critical agricultural state, and small family farms are a crucial component of the state’s food sector. This paper examines how the race/ethnicity of the family farm owners/operators is related to farm characteristics, financing, and impacts of the pandemic. It compares 75 farms owned/operated solely by Whites and 15 with People of Color owners/operators. The essay examines how farmers finance their farm operations and the challenges they face doing so. The article also explores how the Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic affected farming operations, the financial viability of farms, and how farmers responded to the challenges posed by the pandemic. The study found that People of Color farm owners/operators were younger than White farm owners/operators. The People of Color farm owners/operators tended to manage smaller farms for shorter periods than White farm owners/operators. Though two-thirds of the Farmers of Color owned their farms, they were more financially vulnerable than White farm owners/operators. The farmers studied had difficulty obtaining loans to finance their farms. Farmers reported increasing requests from people for food assistance during the pandemic. Farmers responded to the pandemic by participating in government programs such as the Farm to Families Food Box Program that purchased their produce. It allowed farmers to supply emergency food assistance programs with products from their farms. The products went to families receiving food assistance from soup kitchens, food banks, and other community-based nonprofits.

Political Imaginations of Community Kitchens in Sweden

Whereas the sociology of food has drawn attention to differences between corporate and alternative foodways, the political imaginations underpinning the latter are often overlooked. This article distinguishes between different political imaginations of the community kitchen, a set of practices characterised by collective preparation and redistribution of food. The analysis builds on ethnographic and archive material in Sweden to outline how the folkkök (people’s kitchen) was once an institutional practice to address urban food insecurity, soon outsourced as altruistic soup kitchens, and then regenerated a century later by the anarchist movement. By distinguishing between altruistic and anarchistic imaginations in this analysis, the article adds another layer to the critical sociological study of alternative foodways.

The ongoing battle to address respiratory health in people experiencing homelessness

The ongoing battle to address respiratory health in people experiencing homelessness

Review: On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief, by Tom Scott-Smith

Review: <i>On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief</i>, by Tom Scott-Smith

How Queen Mother Moore constructed black communities and identity

This essay contends that Audley Moore (commonly known as Queen Mother Moore), an understudied civil rights activist, built both ideological and physical spaces of Black empowerment in response to the racism she encountered in the places she visited. After a brief literature review, this essay turns to the author’s research on a 1978 oral history interview with Moore. Using this archive as a foundation, this essay follows Moore to three locations in the U.S.: Louisiana, Harlem, and the Catskills. This article starts with Moore’s home state to elucidate how seeing Marcus Garvey speak in 1919 equipped her with the necessary tools to confront inequality. Next, it examines how Moore constructed a soup kitchen for African American students in Harlem. This haven served as a precursor to her later founding of the Eloise Moore College for African Studies in Catskills: an institution for higher learning, mutual aid, and above all the decolonization of the mind. By placing these case studies into a single narrative for the first time, this essay evinces how Moore developed her plan for autonomous, African spaces within America. Above all, this college marked the culmination of Moore’s goal to bring freedom to Black youth by feeding their bodies and minds. Fueled with a vision for a potential utopia, Moore created literal and metaphorical communities outside American political and social norms.

An investigation of structural violence in the lived experience of food insecurity

ABSTRACT In Australia, like many high-income countries, food insecurity is associated with increased risks of chronic diseases, sub-optimal development outcomes in children, and mental health conditions including depression and anxiety. Food insecure households employ a range of strategies, including the use of food charity, to help alleviate hunger and meet cost of living pressures. The aim of this paper is to investigate the lived experience of food insecurity for welfare-dependent households, and to examine these experiences within a structural violence framework. Structural violence investigations seek to understand the distal causal factors that can help explain poor health patterns and inequities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with customers (n = 78) of food pantries, soup kitchens, and community development programs (June 2018 to January 2019) in the state of Victoria, Australia. Thematic analysis established evidence of controlling, demeaning and depriving practices in the interactions between the participants and the services and staff at national welfare providers and food charities. The same providers and charities nominally set up to address the exact situations in which participants found themselves. The findings of this study suggest that food and social services are an on-the-ground setting through which structural violence is enacted and experienced.