Eighteen million American households struggled with meals insecurity in 2023, based on statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In Ohio, assistance is coming from an sudden place: the Toledo Public Library.
At the library, Brad Reubendale, former CEO of SAME Café, has reworked conventional library house right into a hub for preventing starvation.
Reubendale based SAME Café — an acronym for the phrases “So All May Eat” — which operates out of an area library and serves lunch to these in want. The café is a participation restaurant the place patrons can both volunteer, pay what they’ll afford or change contemporary produce for a meal.
In Toledo, Ohio, a few third of consumers volunteer their time in return for meals, whereas two-thirds make some type of monetary contribution. A small variety of patrons additionally present produce in change for a meal. The café works carefully with native farms and gardens to supply most of its contemporary elements.
It’s a spot the place everyone seems to be welcome to eat, no matter their capability to pay.
“Every kind of particular person comes, households come, enterprise of us come, of us needing sources or providers come. So it truly is a group hub,” mentioned mentioned Rori Quinonez, a café common.
The first nonprofit SAME Café opened in Denver in 2007, based by Libby and Brad Birky. Inspired by the café’s success, Reubendale needed to convey the mannequin to areas the place these most in want could possibly be discovered.
“Libraries are one of many final vestiges of anyplace that is actually public house,” he mentioned. “No one may be kicked out of a library for being poor.”
Reubendale has a private connection to the mission of SAME Café. After popping out as homosexual, he misplaced his job as a pastor and located himself homeless and residing out of his automotive. During this troublesome time, SAME Café in Denver turned a much-needed place of help for him. He would go to the café, typically dressed up, and quietly make a small donation.
“I’d quietly put a greenback in as a result of I did not need to have to inform my trauma to have the ability to get entry to the useful resource,” he mentioned.
Reubendale believes that those that run nonprofits ought to have firsthand expertise with needing such providers.
For Reubendale, SAME Café is about extra than simply meals—it is about sustaining dignity.
“We do not wanna have somebody greeting on the door saying, ‘Tell me about your story, do you deserve this?'” he mentioned. “It’s about dignity, not simply the meals.”
The café’s method is rooted within the perception that actual change occurs when individuals assist themselves.
“I believe SAME Café is a kind of lovely locations the place individuals can discover assist for themselves,” Reubendale mentioned. “I do not imagine in serving to individuals. The solely manner that individuals get assistance is after they assist themselves.”
