Clint’s Kitchen is a volunteer-based initiative that sees people in Olds, Alberta, feeding others in their community who are hungry.
Clint Jackson is the founder who came up with the idea after seeing something similar in neighbouring Didsbury.
“It’s about community,” said Jackson. “We have people that have lost their husbands or wives, that are lonely, we’ve got people that may be suffering a little bit from anxiety, that don’t get out much, we get all kinds of people in here and it’s wonderful.”
From the start, Jackson turned to family friend Pastor Olav Traa, known as Paster ‘O’, from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. The two were talking about the soup kitchen idea at Jackson’s home and Traa offered space in the church hall.
“The congregation was willing to lend us this space and if I’m honest, Clint and I had really no idea what we were getting into,” said Traa. “This was never a church function, it was always a grass roots community thing.”
Clint’s Kitchen took off, offering free meals every Wednesday evening and now is celebrating its one year anniversary on February 12th -- and it only missed six nights of service the whole year.
“You see people sitting down here that you would not see sitting in a restaurant together,” said Jackson. “It makes my heart warm to see 40, 50, 60 people in here and all visiting.”
Traa says the motto at Clint’s Kitchen is respect, dignity and community and says that’s the focus every single Wednesday evening.
“We have churches that are working together that typically would not be in the same spaces,” said Traa. “It is just such a joy to see all these different kinds of churches and the people from different kinds of churches just working together.”
Traa says it’s not only churches in the community helping out, but school students, hockey teams, service groups, families, friends and companies who make the night a team building event.
He remembers one Wednesday evening when a U18 hockey team showed up to volunteer, their first time doing something like this in the community.
“I explained to them that there’s going to be people here that maybe haven’t eaten in a day, might not know where their next meal is coming from, might not know exactly where they’re sleeping the next day or people that are lonely that need companionship and fellowship,” he said.
“There’s (also) going to be a millionaire or two and I told the hockey team, you will not be able to tell the difference -- so treat everybody as you would your own family member.”
Randy Smith heads a group from the Rotary Club of Olds in the kitchen preparing a meal. On this day the team is making chilli, butter chicken and dill pickle soup, a favorite in Clint’s Kitchen and he says it’s never a problem finding volunteers.
“It actually is a great opportunity for our rotary volunteers to get out,” he said. “Not just to raise money, that’s just one aspect of rotary but it’s getting out and whether it’s planting trees or doing Clint’s Kitchen, it’s awesome and it allows us to see firsthand what the impact is in the community.”
Jackson says he’s proud of how the community has come together to support the initiative and now other communities are contacting him and Traa about starting their own soup kitchens.
“It’s just a bunch of average people from different walks of life getting together and serving a meal and associating with each other,” said Jackson. “It’s wonderful, it just fills my heart and that’s why we’re doing it, you feel like a good person when you’re helping people out.”
