St. Bonaventure Students Lend Hand at
Soup Kitchen in Philadelphia
By Bryan Jackson
SBU ‘12
St. Bonaventure students trekked to Eastern Pennsylvania for a weekend of volunteering at St. Francis Inn soup kitchen.
Over Columbus Day weekend, director of the Franciscan Center for Social Concern Sr. Suzanne Kush, C.S.S.F., and Fr. John Coughlin, O.F.M, accompanied six St. Bonaventure students to the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, where St. Francis Inn has been serving patrons since 1979. This month marked the fourth consecutive year Bonaventure students have volunteered at the soup kitchen, and Fr. John said a return trip next Columbus Day weekend has already been booked.
Direct service to the poor shined through as one of the trip’s pivotal elements, according to Fr. John, who said the soup kitchen relies heavily on volunteers to staff their goodwill operation.
Junior philosophy major Brett Keegan said that while no individual experience, event or person stuck out to him, the trip as a whole left him with a newfound, unique perspective.
“The sights and the sounds, the different smiles and reactions of the guests, the sweat of the other interns working there, the smells, the feelings of the moment all leave a very lasting impression,” he said. “It’s sort of an ineffable feeling, but it’s potent – it’s very palpable.”
The volunteering wasn’t just serving guests at the St. Francis Inn proper. Some students assisted in getting food for the soup kitchen from local supermarkets, and Keegan spent part of Sunday bringing food to patrons who couldn’t get to St. Francis Inn.
One home, he described, had only a mattress and an old refrigerator, and experiencing this poverty firsthand helped him connect with those he was helping.
“To see the disparity between my life and their lives – face-to-face at the Inn or face-to-face at their homes – that was something,” Keegan said. “Also to be received by them, and to be able to give them something, taught me a lot at a deeper level.”
“You get a very different feel reading about poverty and soup kitchens than you do waking the street and hearing the sounds,” he added. “The cadences and texture of your thoughts and images are upheld by those experiences, which are drastically different than the experiences of reading the book, although the information is relatively similar.”
Sr. Suzanne stressed the importance of personal growth after the service trip.
“Unpacking the experience enriches the service experience,” she said. “It’s not just doing nice things but (also) finding how it impacts you.”
Sr. Suzanne also said community was a major part of the trip, a component Keegan felt during his time in Philadelphia.
“The poverty we experienced was a physical representation of a reality of the human condition in that that burden of poverty is something all humans share, but their burden of it is very different from our burden of it,” he said. “I think we were giving each other something, the guests and the servers, but what we were giving was drastically different. At a deeper level we were giving each other humanity in bearing each other’s burden in those moments.”
SBU ‘12
St. Bonaventure students trekked to Eastern Pennsylvania for a weekend of volunteering at St. Francis Inn soup kitchen.
Over Columbus Day weekend, director of the Franciscan Center for Social Concern Sr. Suzanne Kush, C.S.S.F., and Fr. John Coughlin, O.F.M, accompanied six St. Bonaventure students to the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, where St. Francis Inn has been serving patrons since 1979. This month marked the fourth consecutive year Bonaventure students have volunteered at the soup kitchen, and Fr. John said a return trip next Columbus Day weekend has already been booked.
Direct service to the poor shined through as one of the trip’s pivotal elements, according to Fr. John, who said the soup kitchen relies heavily on volunteers to staff their goodwill operation.
Junior philosophy major Brett Keegan said that while no individual experience, event or person stuck out to him, the trip as a whole left him with a newfound, unique perspective.
“The sights and the sounds, the different smiles and reactions of the guests, the sweat of the other interns working there, the smells, the feelings of the moment all leave a very lasting impression,” he said. “It’s sort of an ineffable feeling, but it’s potent – it’s very palpable.”
The volunteering wasn’t just serving guests at the St. Francis Inn proper. Some students assisted in getting food for the soup kitchen from local supermarkets, and Keegan spent part of Sunday bringing food to patrons who couldn’t get to St. Francis Inn.
One home, he described, had only a mattress and an old refrigerator, and experiencing this poverty firsthand helped him connect with those he was helping.
“To see the disparity between my life and their lives – face-to-face at the Inn or face-to-face at their homes – that was something,” Keegan said. “Also to be received by them, and to be able to give them something, taught me a lot at a deeper level.”
“You get a very different feel reading about poverty and soup kitchens than you do waking the street and hearing the sounds,” he added. “The cadences and texture of your thoughts and images are upheld by those experiences, which are drastically different than the experiences of reading the book, although the information is relatively similar.”
Sr. Suzanne stressed the importance of personal growth after the service trip.
“Unpacking the experience enriches the service experience,” she said. “It’s not just doing nice things but (also) finding how it impacts you.”
Sr. Suzanne also said community was a major part of the trip, a component Keegan felt during his time in Philadelphia.
“The poverty we experienced was a physical representation of a reality of the human condition in that that burden of poverty is something all humans share, but their burden of it is very different from our burden of it,” he said. “I think we were giving each other something, the guests and the servers, but what we were giving was drastically different. At a deeper level we were giving each other humanity in bearing each other’s burden in those moments.”
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