San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen
San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen
Founded by three sisters, San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen has been active in serving the needs of the poor and hungry in the Española Valley and surrounding communities since July of 1992. We are located in the center of the low-income housing community of Apple Valley. The clients we serve receive little or no additional food assistance so the meals and food boxes we provide are crucial to their basic needs.
Although our dining room facility is currently closed due to the pandemic, we continue to serve Sack Lunches at the door, five days a week, Monday through Friday. These include hot soups, casseroles, etc. We serve an average of 100-120 patrons per day (25 of these clients are in-ambulatory; these meals are delivered), and provide food boxes on a weekly basis to other needy families who are referred by a church or other partner agency. In addition, we provide perishable and non perishable goods to other Agencies so they can distribute as needed. These Agencies distribute food to Pueblos and other poor rural areas. We also distribute 550 Holiday Food Boxes annually.
In 2022, we provided a total 41,145 meals. In 2023, we had an increase of approximately 37% in our clientele and served a total of 56,330 meals. To meet the needs of our clients, we have made our daily menus easier for our volunteers to prepare and serve, and we have increased the number of emergency meals we have on-hand to use as a backup if we do not have enough meals for a specific day. We have also increased the number of our ready-to-go food boxes to have available as the requests come in. Filling the needs of the poor and hungry of the Española Valley and surrounding communities is an ongoing project and our main mission.
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The Santa Fe Community Foundation invited its nonprofit grantees to submit stories related to our January topic of Health & Human Services.
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