Soup Kitchens Need You

By Michele Piscitelli

          Theresa Dooley, a sophomore at St. Thomas Aquinas College, spoke to a class at the college yesterday to persuade people to volunteer at their local soup kitchens. Theresa began her work with soup kitchens in Rockland County during her senior year in high school.
          “I started volunteering so I would have something good to put on my college applications, but then I didn’t want to stop,” she said. Dooley admitted that she knows the reasons people usually do not volunteer at soup kitchens is because they are nervous about the people they’ll be serving, they are scared of the work, and they do not want to work without getting paid.  To dispute these assumptions, she addressed each one.
          Dooley started by talking about the types of people that come to soup kitchens to eat. “Most people assume that soup kitchens are crawling with scary homeless men with dirty clothes and missing fingers, but I can assure you that you will not see anything like that.” She explained that most of the clients are families with small children who are struggling with their finances and want to give their kids a hot meal.
          Next she moved to the kind of work future volunteers can expect to perform. “There are several jobs available for volunteers. You can serve the food, set up and clean up the eating area, wash dishes, prepare the food, and many others. So if you do not want to be in direct contact with the customers you can find another job to suit your needs.”
          As she spoke against the false rumors about soup kitchens, the audience seemed to open up to the idea of volunteering there. In order to completely sell her audience, Dooley addressed the issue of compensation. “I know the main reason people do not volunteer is because they do not want to give their time and energy to something that they feel they don’t get anything out of. But that is false. I am not going to preach to you about the feeling you get from doing good, but tell you about real benefits you can receive from charity work,” she said. Dooley added that any type of volunteer work looks great on resumes and it is proven that employers will hire someone with volunteer experience over someone who doesn’t have it.
          By disputing the false fears about volunteer work and explaining the benefits you can get from it, Theresa was hoping to persuade others to start working with the local soup kitchens in Rockland County. She ended her speech by giving the audience a list of the local kitchens that are near St. Thomas Aquinas College and their phone numbers, so her audience will be able to start their volunteer work immediately.
          She closed her speech with a humorous statement, “Now you all have no excuse to not start working at soup kitchens.”