A Generous Community
There was so much that could be talked about at Love City from this past week, our Spring Carnival, our Tuesday night community dinner, our last day of school. Through it all, there was a common thread, a thread that most people from outside of our neighborhood would not expect to see here. From a community that is statistically and stereotypically associated with poverty came a week of generosity.
It started last Friday, right after school got out. A group of middle school girls came straight to the Fish Fry, just as they had every week for the past couple of months. They wanted a free snack but they already knew what my answer would be, “No free rides around here, do some work to make your community better”. After getting their work done and eating their snacks they were just hanging out, then the dinner rush came. During rushes, I float around, supporting whatever area may be slowing down. Every spot that I normally help at was already filled by a student, breading more fish, helping the line, checking orders, running orders, I was out of work. Our middle school girls had taken ownership in their community and decided to spend their Friday night hanging out with and helping us. Then came Saturday.
One of Mighty Oak’s Middle Schoolers breading some fish for the Fish Fry
Saturday was the culmination of months of our community event committee planning. Each of them had committed to helping plan and execute the carnival, an event that came at the perfect time. The day before, it had been announced that the beloved Portland Festival had been canceled due to lack of funds, a headline that probably fed into the “poor” label associated with Portland. I think the real problem is that our community does not like excess, we know how to have a good time on a reasonable budget. This reality played out on Saturday morning, Portland people bought the food, Mighty Oak Parents brought the buns, a family connected with Portland donated a brand new sno-cone machine, Save-a-lot bought the ice, parents and students worked the games and food, bounce houses and our local Elvis impersonator were also from Portland. Portland put on the entire carnival, Love City just partnered.
Students who wanted to run food booths at the carnival
As we were cleaning up from the carnival, I had a bunch of leftover produce that needed to be given out. I called up someone from our old food distribution network and she came to pick it up to give to all her neighbors. It was quite a bit of produce that needed to be loaded up into her pickup truck, so I had a couple of our middle school boys that were hanging around, help her load up. Then once they were done, they didn’t want to stop there, they wanted to go with her to give out the food. So they asked their parents for permission and loaded up into the back of her truck to go give the food out with her.
Students Loading Up a truck full of fresh produce to give out
To cap everything off, we had our final Tuesday night community dinner of the school year. The culinary class had created the menu based off of the things they learned to make this year. The only issue, there was no culinary class during the final week to prepare everything. So at 3:30, right after they got out of school on their last week until summer vacation, 10-15 students came straight over to the kitchen to start working on the community's dinner. There were kids preparing pizza dough, adding the sauces, putting on toppings, doing anything and everything that needed to be done.
Made from scratch pizza’s by our students
This week was a reminder for me of the generosity of our community, something that I have known about for a while. There are countless stories I have heard of people opening their doors to the homeless, opening their pantries to struggling addicts, and opening their wallets to someone down on their luck. This week I was able to be reminded of that generosity as I saw the time and resources individuals pulled together for the good of our community. In a community that statistically has less resources, many people who don’t live here just see poverty, but I just see generosity.
Ethan
While our 1,000 neighbors giving $25 a month campaign has officially ended, we are still looking for partners to help sponsor students at Mighty Oak Academy. If you can join in and partner with us please click the link below.
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Get your student deigned apparel here.
Kemet with her shirt design
If you are interested in volunteering or to find out more information about supplies needed please email: info@lovecityinc.org or call (502) 272-078.