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Murray’s Soup for the Soul celebrated its seventh birthday Wednesday, and Program Manager and Volunteer Coordinator Olivia Roberson and Kitchen Manager David Morgan are pictured at the soup kitchen with Wednesday’s volunteer team. Pictured, from left, are Daniel Haulk, Amy Futrell, Roberson, Morgan and Trice Seargent.
Murray’s Soup for the Soul celebrated its seventh birthday Wednesday, and Program Manager and Volunteer Coordinator Olivia Roberson and Kitchen Manager David Morgan are pictured at the soup kitchen with Wednesday’s volunteer team. Pictured, from left, are Daniel Haulk, Amy Futrell, Roberson, Morgan and Trice Seargent.
MURRAY – As Soup for the Soul celebrates its seventh birthday this week, the nonprofit organization is also marking the milestone of serving 400 children through its Lunch & Literacy program.
Soup the Soul held a party for its seventh anniversary Wednesday afternoon, and this summer marks the fifth year for the Lunch & Literacy program that delivers meals and books to children throughout the county, said Board of Directors Chair Noraa Ransey. Ransey said the soup kitchen works with the family resource centers from the Murray Independent and Calloway County school districts to identify families that are in the most need, but they don’t turn down anyone who ask to be included. One concern her board and the staff at the resource centers have is that school districts across the country expect COVID-era federal meal funding to cease at the end of this month.
“We keep official paperwork and try to do our best to get (meals to) the families who need it the most, but we’ve been very fortunate to not have to say no to anybody,” Ransey said. “We are expecting to go over 400 (participants this summer). We know some of the government-funded meals that the schools are doing and some of the benefits that some of our families that come to the kitchen regularly are stopping on June 30, so we don’t cap it off. If there’s a family that comes in July, we’ll take them because our goal is (having) no kid hungry for the summer.”
Before the pandemic, family resource centers served free lunches at Chestnut Park, and while Ransey said that program – which is no longer in effect – helped a lot of kids, the resource centers at that time identified families that didn’t have transportation or couldn’t afford the gas to come to town. Soup for the Soul tried picking up families with a bus, but that still didn’t quite solve the problem because they couldn’t always make it to the locations where the bus stopped. By making deliveries of books and food to individual homes, the program has become accessible to far more kids, Ransey said.
The Lunch & Literacy program started four years ago serving about 75 homes, and Ransey said it is not surprising that the need has grown because the soup kitchen has seen its clientele tick upward in the last couple of months.
“We’ve been seeing 130-plus regularly for the past couple of months, and our average pre-COVID number had been around 80,” Ransey said. “It’s just steadily picked up with the increase in food costs and transportation and problems getting things.”
When Lunch & Literacy began, Soup for the Soul was mostly handing out snack bags or non-perishables that could be heated, but the selection has become more diverse and substantial since then. Ransey said kids are sent a meal bag that they can cook as a family, and the organization has heard a lot of positive comments from families and the drivers who make the deliveries. The first meal being delivered this summer is Tuna Helper with vegetables and bread, and she said it is usually enough food to last families a few nights. The portions that are delivered are based on the number living in the household, she said.
Olivia Roberson, Soup for the Soul’s program manager and volunteer coordinator, said Lunch & Literacy is one of her favorite programs because it not only provides nourishment for children who need it, but encourages them to keep their minds active during the summer by continuing to read.
“I feel like sometimes (children’s needs are) overlooked, so to get to go to these kids’ houses and get to know the families and get to know their kids, learn what books they like to read and what their favorite snack is – it’s another way we can connect with the community and build relationships.”
Roberson said Soup for the Soul could not carry out its mission without all the financial support it gets from local churches, businesses and individuals, as well as teachers and others who donate books to the program. She said the University of Kentucky’s Calloway County Cooperative Extension Office also provides the program with nutrition, hygiene and recipe resources. She said several local grocery stores and other food sellers also assist the agency with ordering in bulk.
“It’s definitely a community effort … so there’s a lot of hands that go into making this happen,” Roberson said.
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