Cooking for a Cause
Exonians can become trapped inside the “Exeter bubble,” sometimes forgetting that there is a local community beyond the walls of our dorms and classrooms. Rushing from classes to sports, from ESSO clubs to musical ensembles, they forget about those less fortunate who can barely make ends meet. Three Exonians are looking beyond the bubble to help.
Senior Marq Schieber and uppers Anniew Yanofsky and Veronica Galimberti are helping homeless people in our area, and they’re doing it a unique way. Last year, they started “Cooking for a Cause,” an ESSO club designed to combine students’ love of cooking with their concern for the basic need of others for a simple daily meal.
“Cooking for a Cause” meets in the kitchen of Main Street dorm for two hours every other Sunday afternoon, and its members focus on providing a meal for the local homeless population. “Our main goal when we started this club was to be able to give back to the Exeter community outside of our campus by cooking for families in need,” Galimberti said.
“Our main goal when we started this club was to be able to give back to the Exeter community outside of our campus by cooking for families in need.”
After cooking the food, club members bring the meals to an organization to serve it to the homeless. Since the club heads said they prefer to serve the homeless people face-to-face, they often bring the food to The Seacoast Family Promise, a local organization of Churches in the area that hosts a group of homeless families. The families move from church to church depending on the week. If the group is in the Exeter area, Cooking for a Cause will distribute food. If the group is not in the area, the co-heads will bring the food to Crossroads House (Portsmouth, NH), where other volunteers distribute the food to the homeless families living at the facility.
Crossroads House and other organizations are cautious about allowing students to distribute the food in person, because one of the primary duties of the organization is to protect the privacy and dignity of the homeless people it serves. “Sometimes they won’t let us distribute the food to them, because they’re afraid that we are going to know the kids in the area, even though it’s very unlikely because we go to a boarding school,” Yanofsky said. Still, the club heads are always on the lookout for more opportunities to distribute their food to the homeless without an intermediary.
In the future, the club heads hope to expand Cooking for a Cause and partner with the ESSO club that serves meals at Crossroads House. “We’re going to cook meals for them to bring to the shelter, and then they’re going to serve our meals,” Yanofsky said. They also hope to move the club meetings from Main Street dorm’s kitchen to the kitchen in the basement of the Academy Center.
The club always cooks an entire meal: a salad, dessert and entree. The entree is typically something most people would enjoy and can be easily cooked in large quantities, as the club usually cooks for about 10 to 12 people. In the past, some entrees have included lasagna, steak, tacos and stir fry. Although they do cook small desserts, the club is committed to only cooking healthy entrees. “We always cook dessert just to make people happy,” Yanofsky said, “but, we try to keep [the food] healthy.”
Yanofsky and Galimberti agree that they have benefited from being a part of the club just as much as the homeless people have benefited from having home-cooked meals. For Yanofsky, cooking with the club reminds her of times spent cooking with her family, before the pressures of schoolwork began to weigh on her. “My family used to cook every Sunday before I came here,” she said. “We would all cook together, but now, time is limited. [This club] allows me to do that and at the same time just give back to people through food ... which is definitely a good way to do it because it shows love.”
Poverty is closer to our Exeter bubble than most students may realize. In 2013, 9.7 percent of residents of the town of Exeter were living below the national poverty line. As for “Cooking for a Cause,” the culinary aficionados of the club members find that making an impact on the local community is personally gratifying. “Knowing that our efforts are really making a difference has definitely been the most rewarding part,” Galimberti said. “Being a part of this club has reshaped the way I think of community service by showing me how fun and rewarding it can be.”
Although all ESSO clubs focus on helping others, few of them venture off campus. Yet, Cooking for a Cause brings cooking and service together to make an impact outside of the Exeter community. Even though “we may not feed tons of people,” Yanofsky said, “[Cooking for a Cause] is more about offering them a meal that’s home-cooked and will make them smile.”