Houselessness and Nutrition
How Stone Soup is Helping
I recently had the opportunity to interview Craig Gerard, Executive Director of Stone Soup PDX which is a quaint restaurant that sits right between Oldtown and the Pearl districts on Burnside street.
Stone Soup in downtown Portland, Oregon is helping the disadvantaged houseless community by providing food for local shelters and also training those who are at risk of becoming houseless. Those who are at risk of becoming homeless are defined as those who have recently moved or been relocated, partnering with social service providers like Join and Catholic Charities. Referring partners help vex the potential program participants and are excited about careers in the food and service industry. Stone Soup is more interested in where people want to go, as opposed to where they’ve been.
Increasing nutritional intake is of the utmost importance to help the houseless community be able to become self-sufficient. According to an academic article written by Sprake, Russell and Barker, “People experiencing houselessness are at risk of being malnourished due to a low income and lack of ways to store and cook nutritionally beneficial foods, leading to a reliance on cheap, ready-prepared foods. They may also lack knowledge of how to achieve a healthy diet in their situation. Provided food sources (e.g. soup kitchens) make an important contribution to energy intake and nutritional health, but may not be optimised to improve users’ diets.”
Sprake EF, Russell JM, Barker ME. Food choice and nutrient intake amongst homeless people. Faseb J. 2013;27.
Stone Soup PDX trains participants of their program to not only be prepared for a career in the food and hospitality industry, yet also are teaching these same individuals that they too have the capability to create nutritious foods, giving them the power to make nutritious meals themselves. The training is a four month program, basic food preparation, and they can choose their specialty in the third month. Then an externship is found for month four where they will come back and finish with Stone Soup. The participants are being paid a living wage while studying through the program.
Stone Soup’s program gives the tools to those who have the ambition to learn and excel. You can help, do something profound and make a difference. Currently, Stone Soup is responsible for training 16 graduate students and when considering the length of the program, this sits right at national average for graduates for the program that Stone Soup is under.
During the pandemic, Stone Soup PDX is dedicated to donating meals (currently they are making and donating 2000 meals a month through contracts in Multnomah county) having completely changed the operations of the restaurant into a cooking / distributing center. Stone Soup has also been the directing hub that is networking with other restaurants to fulfill nearly 20000 meals a month to shelters contracted by Portland.
It’s simple to think that there are people who just simply won’t make the choice to get on their own two feet, and this idea unfortunately can cauterize our hearts believing that there are those who truly have circumstances outside of their control and need assistance. It’s also important to mention that each individual has their own barriers to success and self-sufficiency. We can unfortunately consider individuals as being “smart” or “not smart” when instead Howard Gardner in his book “Changing Minds” speaks against this idea which is labels as the “Single Intelligence” where is states that some people believe that “intelligence is a single entity,” “people are born with a certain amount of intelligence,” “our amount of intelligence is defined by our genes,” and that “psychologists can tell you how smart you are through an IQ test.” Instead, Gardner writes that there are multiple intelligences in which a single individual can have more or less of and need training for. Some of these intelligences include:
Linguistic intelligence - use spoken and written language
Logical-Mathematical intelligence - reasoning and problem solving
Musical intelligence - understanding various technical forms of music
Spatial intelligence - capacity to form spatial representations
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence - solve problems or creating products
Naturalistic intelligence - differ between types of rocks, animals, clouds, etc
Gardner, Howard. Changing Minds. Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 1992.
https://www.amazon.com/Changing-Minds-Science-Peoples-Leadership-ebook/dp/B00THMKOPS/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=changing+minds+gardner&qid=1619995482&sr=8-1
In my interview with Craig (which will be available within a week) Craig speaks about how the program has impacted many, yet specifically focused his attention on Shawn. He and his wife both went through the program and Craig got to watch as they both got careers in the food and hospitality industry, raised children, and even have future dreams of making a food bus (which according to Craig they already purchased and are renovating on their own time). It’s amazing to think that Craig has truly impacted the lives of the disadvantaged here in Portland. You too can make a similar impact.
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