Everyone deserves a special meal for holidays, says Soup Kitchen director

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on October 10, 2023.

The Lethbridge Soup Kitchen went the extra mile in the community over the Thanksgiving weekend.
The Soup Kitchen served up both a ham and turkey dinner on Sunday and Monday respectively to approximately between 125-150 homeless people.
“Well, one of the things we know and I know (is) that Thanksgiving and Christmas are really special family times for people and usually revolves around food and it’s no different here,” said Bill Ginther, Soup Kitchen executive director.
“People love to have special meals. Our staff love to prepare special meals. We do three meals a day, every day. So this is not new but we like to sort of up the ante a little bit.”
With the meals, the Soup Kitchen wanted people to feel normal and are being treated a bit more special than usual.
“Well we do know that all of us like to have some kind of a special meal at Christmas, and we do. And we think that folks that are homeless should be offered the same,” said Ginther.
“A lot them don’t have families. A lot of them have families that they’ve broken their relationship for whatever reason. We know that they’re not going to be invited to their brother , sister or mom’s place for a meal. This way, they get a real special meal. We’ve changed over the last four or five years. We actually do sit-down meals. We serve them at the table, we fill their plate for them, we like them to take their plate back but they don’t. But then when I go to the restaurant or you, we don’t bring our plates back either. So that’s what happens here.”
In his six-and-a-half years with the Soup Kitchen, Ginther’s approach has been to restore and enhance people’s dignity.
“And you do that by serving them like they’re people, and we treat them like people and we have no need to qualify. You’re hungry, you come, it doesn’t matter.”
Ginther says the Soup Kitchen is providing upwards of 10,000 meals per month.

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