What is Manna?
Manna Community Kitchen is a nonprofit organization that strives to provide hot, nutritious meals to hungry people in the local community in a safe and hospitable setting where guests can find warmth and fellowship and be treated with respect. Manna has an interfaith Board of Directors dedicated to sustaining this effort.
What does Manna do?
Since 1986, Manna Community Kitchen has been providing free, hot meals, five days a week, 52 weeks a year to the greater Northampton community. In addition, Manna prepares and serves close to 1,000 meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas at a sit-down dinner as well as delivering meals to the homebound. Over 25,000 meals are served in the course of a year.
A Smith College study of Manna, praised “the sense of community and dignity that is the core of Manna’s philosophy.”
Where and When does Manna serve meals?
St. John’s Episcopal Church and Edwards Church generously support Manna by hosting meals year round.
Manna serves meals on the following days:
Monday, 11:30 AM, St. John’s Church, 48 Elm St, Northampton, MA
Tuesday, 11:30 AM, St. John’s Church, 48 Elm St, Northampton, MA
Wednesday, 6:00 PM, St. John’s Church, 48 Elm St, Northampton, MA
Thursday, 11:30 AM, St. John’s Church, 48 Elm St, Northampton, MA
Saturday, 11:30 AM, Edwards Church, 297 Main St, Northampton, MA
Daytime meal times are expanded to two hours for help with social distancing.
Who comes to Manna?
Manna’s guests are anyone in need of a sustaining meal and a place of welcome. Everyone involved with Manna realizes that anyone can find themselves in these unfortunate situations.
How many staff prepare and serve the meals?
A dedicated, skilled cook runs the kitchen with many local volunteers. More than 200 people participate in Manna as volunteers. On any given day, 5 – 10 volunteers help prepare and serve each day’s meal.
How is Manna funded?
Our program’s budget depends on
- individual donors
- donations from religious organizations
- grants
- food purchased at reduced prices from the local Food Bank of Western Massachusetts
- local stores
- restaurants
- farmers
All these angels come together and provide us the means to put healthy food in front of those who grace us with the opportunity. It’s a challenge each month to be sure, but we are blessed with a 33 year history of making ends meet.
Manna can not survive without the help of individual donors. Your contribution assures that a needy person does not go to bed hungry. Please give generously.
For a more detailed history of Manna, please see “Food from Heaven MANNA Soup Kitchen Turns 30,” by Victoria Ix (originally published in Abundant Times: A publication of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, Winter 2016).