LoadUp Community Service: Atlanta Women’s Community Kitchen

The Women’s Community Kitchen

Located at 458 Ponce de Leon Ave NE in Atlanta, GA, The Women’s Community Kitchen is run by Action Ministries. Their mission is to “mobilize communities to address the challenges of poverty by focusing on hunger relief, housing and education.”

In the city of Atlanta, over 2,000 people are seeking a place to sleep every night. Many of whom are mothers and their children, who have survived domestic violence. According to the Atlanta Community Food Bank, 1 in every 8 people in the Atlanta area look for food banks and kitchens to feed themselves and their families.

Food Insecurity Facts

• More than 37 million Americans live in households that struggle against hunger.
• Children are more likely to face food insecurity than any other group in the United States.
• Nearly one in seven households with children cannot buy enough food for their families.
• 15.1 percent of Georgians are food insecure, meaning that they don’t always know where they will find their next meal.
• The average cost of a meal in Fulton County is $3.70.

The Community Kitchen, serves and provides warm, fresh meals to women and children who are suffering from food insecurity. They have successfully served more than 20,000 meals every year. At the kitchen, not only are there volunteers helping serve the food and interacting with the women and children, but there are also qualified experts who ultimately help these women with the goal of breaking the cycle of poverty.

Although Action Ministries does not have any ties to a religion, they have great relationships with religious communities, such as The Georgia Baptist Mission Board, who are the owners of The Grace Church where the kitchen is located.

All women and children are welcome to come and eat a meal, on a first come first serve basis. The goal of course being, everyone that needs food will get food. Many of the women that come in are from local shelters around the area, but due to the pandemic, the kitchen is seeing a rise in women living on the streets coming in for a meal. However, the only true way for these women to know about the kitchen is though word of mouth around town.

LoadUp Wants To Giveback

For as long as LoadUp has been a company, we have wanted to somehow give back to the community, more than donating your old junk to those in need. We wanted to choose a service that we would be able to physically be there for and help as many people in need as we could.

As a company we got together to think about which community service project we felt would benefit from our help. We all sent in suggestions and then left it to a vote narrowing down our projects to a final three. From there the company voted once again and the winner was The Women’s Community Kitchen!

Once we realized the extraordinary work that the Women’s Community Kitchen was doing for homeless and low-income women and children, we all could understand that this project was way bigger than us.

Our Project

In the midst of a global pandemic, volunteering looks a little different than we first envisioned, however, the impact can still be felt.

Beacause the community kitchen is only accepting premade bags with individually packaged items, we decided to pack lunch and hygiene bags so the women would be able to easily take them with them.

We were able to prepare and donate 150 to-go lunches and 150 hygiene bags for the women to take!

Our friends at Chick-Fil-A and Custom Ink kindly participated in this service project with us, and each donated supplies for us to use. Chick-Fil-A donated cookies, chips, water and utensils and Custom Ink donated 150 reusable bags. The reusable bags were special to be able to donate because it may the only bag the women have and they are finally able to hold their few belongings in one place.

Moving forward, we are starting a donation box in the office for everyone to bring in food and other supplies, like blankets, to give to be donated to these women. Although this was our first service project, it will not be our last.