Kamiano Soup Kitchen

A Short history and the role AIPC can play:

The soup kitchen "Kamiano" is part of a wider work by the Community of Sant'Egidio (see article below for some background information on the community).

On 1 June 2005, it celebrated its 11th year of serving free meals to the underprivileged in Antwerp.

The kitchen is located at 28 Lombardenstraat and is open every Wednesday and Saturday from 4:30 pm - 7:00 pm and serves about 200-250 people each evening. Directions/MAP

How AIPC is supporting Kamiano and how you as a member of AIPC can help
As a church, we started supporting Kamiano financially in 2002 through the Missions and Benevolence fund. In addition, part of the money from one-off fundraisers like this year's Auction for Missions goes to Kamiano. This money goes a long way. As an example, the 200 Euros raised during the auction for Kamiano can help it to give one person 1 warm meal a week for a whole year. (See Section "What does it cost to feed one person?")

Apart from financial support, AIPC members can support Kamiano in a very practical way, which is to volunteer to serve at the tables or in the kitchen each evening. There are about 11 tables that seat 6 persons each time and as the turnover per table is high (about 4 times per evening), you can imagine the manpower required for this task!

Kamiano requires up to 4 servers from AIPC per night and would prefer to take adults and youths over 13 years of age. To date close to 40 members of AIPC have served at Kamiano since March 2002 with many members having served more than once.

How do I sign up?
You can do this in one of two ways.

First, there is a sign-up sheet located at the church bulletin board every Sunday after the service. Once you have signed up for a particular day, you will be reminded closer to the day and also be told who to look for once you get to the kitchen.

Second, call or e-mail Paula Bemelmans.

Please arrive by 16:00 and plan to stay until 19:30
Dinner served from 16:30-19:00
Adults and youth 16 + (one adult must accompany each youth)

??Questions??
Please call Paula Bemelmans (0497.43.04.79)
or email paula.bemelmans@tiscali.be
Duties include:

• set up
• serving food
• clean up and
• sharing God’s love!
  

What does it cost to feed one person?
It costs 3.75 Euro to feed one person for one night.
This works out to be 195 Euro to feed one person / one meal / each week for a whole year
and 390 Euro to feed one person / 2 meals / each week for a whole year.

The origin of the Community of Sant'Egidio
The Community of Sant'Egidio began in Rome in 1968, at the initiative of a young man called Andrea Riccardi. He gathered a group of high-school students, like himself, to listen to and to put the Gospel into practice. The first Christian communities of the Acts of the Apostles and Francis of Assisi were the first reference points. The small group immediately began going to the outskirts of Rome visiting the slums, then crowded with many poor people, and they began an afternoon school for children.

Since then the community has increased. It is now in more than 60 countries in 4 continents. There are about 40.000 members as well as many more who are permanently cooperating in the service to poor people and in the various activities of Sant'Egidio without being part of the community in a strict sense. There are also a large number of people reached by the various activities of service that the community performs.

One of the activities undertaken by the Sant'Egidio community, in addition to prayer and communication of the gospel, is the act of friendship to poor people

Friendship with poor people
The students of 1968 who began gathering around the Word of God, felt the Gospel could not be lived far from poor people: poor people as friends and the Gospel as the Good News for poor people.

In accordance with chapter 25 of the Gospel of Matthew, this friendship widened to other poor people: physically and mentally disabled, homeless, foreign immigrants, terminally ill people; and to different situations: prisons, homes for old people, gypsy camps, refugee camps. Over the years sensitivity towards nontraditional poverty developed, especially in European countries where, for example, old people remain alone even if they are wealthy.

Sant'Egidio identifies with those who are considered the least, considering them as brothers, with no exclusions. They are fully part of the family of the community. Wherever there is a community of Sant'Egidio, from Rome to San Salvador, from Cameroon to Belgium, from Ukraine to Indonesia, friendship and familiarity with poor people are always at the center. There is no community, not even the youngest one, which is so small or weak that cannot help other poor people. It is the "widow's mite" which has great value for the Lord (Mark 12:41).

One of the avenues in which the hand of friendship is extended to the poor is through soup kitchens like Kamiano.

The Soup-kitchens
Providing food for the hungry is a very old value, which has spread to other cultures, because it has a direct link to the value of life. The scandal of hunger is a decisive fact for the Christian consciousness as from the Gospel parable of the rich man, who banquets lavishly while the poor Lazarus stays at the door.

In these kitchens, guests are served with a free warm and abundant meal in a friendly and hospitable climate. Whoever comes to eat finds not only satisfaction for his/her hunger, but also what often is denied them: sympathy, respect and human warmth.

The attention to dignity and to personality of everybody is expressed in the care of the environment, in the courteous attitude of the volunteers serving to the tables.

IVAN CHOW