Helping local food pantries and community kitchens

LCO, January – June 2021

In March 2020, Lighthouse Center Oregon (LCO) shifted gears with a COVID-19 response charity project to support food pantries and homeless shelters. Read more in our blog post Switching focus for COVID-19 response. Since then LCO has continued to donate baked goods, cooked food, and fresh produce to local charities that are serving the food insecure in Douglas County, Oregon. Throughout January to June 2021, LCO donated 830 loaves of bread, 1,236 desserts ranging from fruit danishes, to monkey bars, to sticky buns, and cookies, 40 pints of soup, and 100 heads of lettuce harvested from the LCO garden. These donations served approximately 1,000 people.

Once again, the Lighthouse Center Bakery kindly offered its premises to support these activities. LCO volunteers used the bakery’s commercial kitchen to bake and pack bread and desserts, cook wholesome vegetarian soups, and process and bag heads of lettuce. Then LCO volunteers made weekly deliveries in Roseburg to FISH Food Pantry and Roseburg Rescue Mission. In Sutherlin, the crew delivered each week to St. Francis Community Kitchen.

St. Francis Community Kitchen serves about 140 people in need twice per week. They serve hot meals and give out bags of food for people to take home. Even though St. Francis Community Kitchen get canned and boxed food from distribution centers, they said they can’t get what LCO donates. According to them, LCO’s freshly baked goods, homemade wholesome food, and fresh garden produce are priceless and loved by the families who receive them.

FISH Food Pantry is the largest emergency food pantry in Douglas County. They provide food and supplies for low-income families who need a helping hand in between paychecks. Families in need visit the pantry to choose groceries most appropriate for their families, free of charge. LCO’s baked goods, frozen soups, and fresh produce are among the many food items offered at the FISH Food Pantry.

Roseburg Rescue Mission is a soup kitchen that serves 3 hot meals, 7 days per week. They serve LCO bread with their meals to the homeless in Roseburg.

LCO volunteers participate in Fish Food Pantry’s Roseburg Food Project

FISH Food Pantry also runs the Roseburg Food Project. The project is an innovative way to collect food from donors who wish to help the food insecure in their community. Neighborhood coordinators deliver empty green bags to donors to fill up with grocery items a bit at a time. Every two months, on scheduled days, donors place their filled green bags on the porch for the neighborhood coordinators to pick up. The bags are delivered to FISH food pantry where the donated items are sorted and stocked onto pantry shelves.

Twenty-seven LCO volunteers from twenty-one households joined the local community in this program. They were pleased to participate in the ongoing effort to support the community. LCO volunteers donated food items and served as neighborhood coordinators to pick up the green bags and deliver them to FISH food pantry. In June 2021, LCO volunteers donated 26 bags of packaged food, weighing about 350 pounds.

Give your deepest respect to everyone, and serve all. Everyone is God, and He is in everyone.

Sant Baljit Singh Ji