Southside Presbyterian Church in South Tucson, Arizona, seeks community help for kitchen overhaul to serve homeless

Southside Presbyterian Church in South Tucson has served homeless people through its kitchen for years. With a complete overhaul needed in the area, the church has turned to the community for help.

Yvette Gonzalez, now a deacon at the church, has come to the kitchen for nearly five years. After struggling with addiction, she said, the space became her home, and the people in it became her family.

“Brought out the good side of me. Coming from where I grew up to now. It’s made me see life in a different way,” Gonzalez said. She spends many of her days working in the kitchen with a goal of helping others who need it most. She told Tucson News Now that she sees herself, twenty to fifty years from now, as one of the older women still there.

According to the report, Gonzalez and the church often look to the values of Martin Luther King Jr., a theme the report describes as timely. The report notes that King once visited Southside Presbyterian. Pastor Alison Harrington said the church wants “to create a community where all are welcomed and all are told they have value and dignity.”

More people are arriving to be fed, and the space is limited, so times have become tough for the local church. Harrington said, “There’s so much more that we’d be able to do for the homeless community if we had a better kitchen.”

Last year the kitchen served around 30,000 meals to people who were hungry or homeless in Tucson, showing welcome to the hungry and the stranger (Matthew 25:35). The church serves meals on Monday and Friday mornings, and Harrington told Tucson News Now that no space in the facilities goes unused during those times.

Looking to the community for help, the church is only a third of the way to its $225,000 goal.

Source: Read the original report