Clarkesville Soup Kitchen

The Clarkesville Soup Kitchen was established in
1991, is located at 166 Ritchie Street in Clarkesville.
It has been providing warm lunches to anyone in need
(except for a brief closure in 2017). This awesome task
includes coordinating over 100 volunteers who work in
groups, each group taking one day a month to cook,
serve and clean at the kitchen. This soup kitchen has
been open for lunch from 11:30 am – 12:30 p.m. Monday
through Saturday for over a quarter of a century and
has been open every holiday since the doors opened.
Most folks used to come in, sit down and eat their
meals, but the COVID pandemic changed the entire
operational model. The facility served over 12,000 to-
go plates in 2021 and has been setting records ever
since.
In 1994, Faith became a dedicated group of
volunteers at the Clarkesville Soup Kitchen the first
Saturday of each month. For almost 30 years, Faith has
served the Soup Kitchen once monthly and more recently,
with a change in Directors, assigned the fifth Thursday
of the month. Summer time is especially busy for the
small kitchen as parents come in to help feed their
children when school is out. The people who eat lunch
at this soup kitchen every day come mostly from the
low-income apartments surrounding the building where
the kitchen is housed. Some of the residents are not
able to leave their apartments, so volunteers deliver
“to go” plates to them. Director Betty Jones relies on
donors from various churches, police and fire
departments, and other local organizations to keep the
kitchen up and running and the freezers stocked. No one
is turned away and multiple to go meals are provided on
request. Our little church in the foothills of the
Appalachian mountain range, truly moves mountains!