Table for Lou is made up of many volunteers who support various communities. This post will explore who we are and who we serve. 

Volunteers:

As of today, Table for Lou is made up of roughly 20 active volunteers.

A quarter of Table for Lou’s volunteers were born in a different country. We collectively speak about a dozen languages including Spanish, Cantonese, American Sign Language, German and Bosnian. Most of our volunteers are entrepreneurs, and the majority have some form of professional education background. Many of us have worked in restaurants, while a few of us run food related businesses.

Our diverse backgrounds allowed us to explore different cuisines from around the world in our Monday night class. We were fortunate enough to have volunteers from our featured regions who either shared recipes or taught a class! Some of the highlights included foods from Costa Rica, Korea, China, Vietnam, Sub Saharan Africa, and Mexico!

We are on a constant search for new volunteers to help us serve our community. More than anything, I treasure our volunteers for their empathy and desire to put others first. We are doing much more than just educating and feeding our community. We are providing emotional support for developing youths and families going through difficult times. People ask me all the time if they need kitchen skills to be able to volunteer. While that is a huge bonus, really what I look for is how well you communicate and interact with others. We’ve had some of the best culinary instructors in the city teaching classes with us, but they were authoritative and not warm to our students. They didn’t last long.

One night, a young man came to class and immediately asked when the food would be done. I assumed he was just being antsy, but turns out he was very hungry. After eating our meals, he opened up to me and a volunteer that he and his mom just moved to town and they only had an oven in their kitchen. They were nothing but eating frozen pizzas. Our volunteer was heartbroken and immediately went to a thrift store and built their family a starter kitchen set.

More recently, during a taco night, I purchased 10 pounds of beef. Unfortunately, that was not enough meat to feed our large, hungry class and we ran out. As we were cleaning up, three young men came down looking for food. They asked “where is the meat” to which I replied that we were out. Without missing a beat, another volunteer asked, “do you boys like scrambled eggs?” Needless to say, those three boys ate a dozen of the prettiest silky scrambled eggs I have ever seen.

One of our volunteers is a wonderful baker, who has prepared half a dozen birthday wish desserts, from carrot cakes, to multiple tiramisu(s). Another volunteer made a young man’s day by sharing one of his incredible secret recipes. Our newest volunteer donated around 50 Funko Pop figures to the kids in the hospital. It was entertaining watching kids and their parents riffle through our boxes asking if the other know who “Edward Scissor Hands,” “Napoleon Dynamite” or “Muttley” is.

Kitchen skills are not all that hard to learn (or fudge). Table for Lou needs to be more than a cooking class or a meal for hungry people. We are building up tiny communities and letting our neighbors know that we are here to love and support them.

Students:

At The Core Collective, class attendance is 100% optional and the classes aren’t advertised. Students find out about it purely through word of mouth, either from the facility’s staff or from other students. Luckily, after 6 years, all of the kids who step foot in the facility know about our class. Each Monday, kids greet our teachers at the door and can’t wait to hear what we are cooking. They help us carry the food to our classroom and immediately wash their hands. We continue having kids trickle in throughout the class, and usually get a surge of hungry kids as the meals are being finished. We spread the ingredients out into different areas of our kitchen based on how each recipe will be prepared, then start allocating out tasks to our eager students. Most kids can’t wait to do whatever we ask, but some kids want to sit at the tall tables and just watch. We have two different “populations” of students, “residents of The Core Collective” and “Drop Ins.” Some students live at The Core Collective, while others, Drop-Ins, are just in the neighborhood, looking for something fun to do.

Between May and July, we taught 12 classes. We taught a total of 134 students a class (according to our voluntary sign in sheet, which can be a struggle to get students to fill out). Our classes are roughly 53% female, with an average age of 15.5 years old. Of the 134 classes taught, there were 68 unique students. In other words, half of the students came to class more than once in this span of time. One of the residents attended 8 of the 12 classes. Two students attended 7 classes. 6 students attended 4 or more classes. In these three months, three classes had over 15 students, and six classes had less than 10 students.

Some of the students we see only once, while others grow close with our group of volunteers. I’ve had students who can’t wait to tell me all about their week since we last saw each other and have even been invited to a birthday party!

Hospital Patrons

Each Wednesday night, Table for Lou brings in hot meals to feed the families at the BJC Children’s Hospital. We have a handful of restaurants and chefs that we partner with to make this happen. In our first year of operating at the hospital, we served roughly 2,800 families (not to mention hospital volunteers, staff and the Table for Lou crew). I enjoy pointing out that 2,800 is 1% of St Louis’s population. Some “families” were just a hungry mother looking for a break, while others were seemingly an entire community coming to share their support for a loved one. Ages span from baby sisters to grandparents.

Most of the people we see and interact with are the families of patients. We do occasionally see patients, though not often. Parents tend to grab food to-go for their kids, if their children are not on restricted diets. One week, we had a young lady who was star-stuck to meet us, since she had been eating our food for months. She said she couldn’t wait from week to week to see what kind of foods we’d be preparing. She came in just to let us know that she was finally going home and that our food was the bright spot of her hospital stay. Like in our cooking classes, frequency of visits varies. Some families are just at the hospital for a few days, while others I’ve known since we started the program in June 2023.

Moods of families vary as well. The emotions you’d expect are rare. I see someone crying maybe once a month. Typically, the families are cheerful, if not a little bit disoriented and tired. I’ve only seen one hysterical family member. She was distraught. I was amazed at how loving the staff and other families were to this mother. You could tell that everyone in that room had personal experience with how she was feeling.

Feedback:

"We always appreciated your meals so much while being inpatient in the hospital. We were there for 3 months at one stay and it was a special, very much appreciated meal. "
Liz - Mother of BJC Patient

"What a great group that we met during our stay at Children’s hospital! Each Wed this non-profit organization provided a dinner for the families, we looked forward to what Chef and his team would create. To say their food was delicious is an understatement. Jacob enjoyed trying different foods and found new favorites each week. Last week Chef asked him what his favorite dish was and he’d put it on the menu for this week ❤️ They are a great organization that teaches kids to cook so if you’re in the StL area and can volunteer or can donate like I know we will we encourage it. If you want to enjoy the deliciousness of their food you can catch them at various StL outings, like Taste of StL. Thank you Chef and Table for Lou ❤️"
Crystie, Mother of BJC Patient

"Thank you for caring about these kids and the families. Until you are in the situation of having to stay in the hospital you can never understand how much a home cooked meal means to us."
Sharon, NICU BJC Grandparent