Dinner on Friday was sloppy joes for Lamisha Waters and her 4-year-old son, Landon Harris.
Sunday was chicken thighs with brown rice and peaches, and Monday they ate veggie quesadillas.
All the meals were free for the 22-year-old single, working mother, and were delivered to her door Thursday night.
“I look forward to this week every month,” Waters said Friday. “Three separate meals that I don’t have to worry about.”
Once a month, students enrolled in the hotel and restaurant management program at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, gather at the Universities of Shady Grove in Rockville to prepare more than 200 meals for about 15 families, such as Waters and Landon, who receive support from The Dwelling Place Inc., a nonprofit organization in Gaithersburg that provides transitional and long-term housing for residents facing homelessness, offering furnished apartments to families in need, who pay 30 percent of their income for rent.
Diana Ash, a senior at the college, helped cook the families’ meals Thursday night.
“The teachers get to teach us how to cook the food, we learn how to cook the food and The Dwelling Place gets the food,” she said. “We get to learn, and give.”
University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, at the Universities at Shady Grove campus in Rockville is one of 31 schools nationwide that work with The Campus Kitchens Project Inc., a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.
The organization’s mission is to meet hunger and nutritional needs in communities, provide leadership and service opportunities to students, educate adults, seniors, children and families in need and encourage community service. It is funded through grants private donations.
After the students at UMES had been working with The Dwelling Place for about a year, Campus Kitchens provided the students a $5,000 grant to continue the program for three years; they had about $250 per month to work with, before donations and fundraising money. They are in the process of applying for another grant.
The college students order food, which is donated by Whole Foods in Rockville or purchased with grant or fundraising money, plan the menus and cook the meals. They then deliver them, packaged to be reheated, to the residents’ homes.
The goal is to teach students to not just be good business people, but good community service people, said Judy Streeter, director of the hotel and restaurant management program at the college.
The program has been inspirational for Ashley Minton of Laytonsville, the student president of Campus Kitchens.
“I like that we can work together in a kitchen and a classroom, and do something for the outside community that is really nice,” said Minton, 21.
The college’s Campus Kitchen program started about four years ago, when students were looking for a way to earn credits, said Susan Callahan, a chef instructor who started the program at the school.
Callahan wanted to partner with a transitional shelter. When she found The Dwelling Place, it was a perfect fit, she said, because students learn how to serve others, and it allows them to serve their community.
Since it began, the college’s Campus Kitchen has served more than 10,000 meals to Gaithersburg residents who are clients of The Dwelling Place.
The program has been beneficial for the clients, who mostly are single, working mothers with children, said Miriam Gandell, the executive director of The Dwelling Place.
“Most of our families either work or go to a volunteer site,” she said. “They are gone all day, and by the time they take the bus to get home and get the kids, they are exhausted.”
The program serves a number of young mothers, such as Waters, who might not have cooked much in their life, and shows them nutritious, affordable meals they can make in the future, Gandell said.
Waters said she is very busy. She takes Landon to a baby sitter every morning, and then rides a bus to work at an assisted living home in Rockville. Het typical shift runs from 7:30 a.m. until 3:30 or 4:30 p.m.
The Campus Kitchens program has helped by providing services such as a session teaching crock pot recipes, she said.
Campus Kitchen hosts the educational seminars about once per year, Callahan said. Topics include nutritional cooking on a budget, knife skills and food safety.
Waters, who did not know much about cooking, now prepares stews, chicken and pot roast regularly, she said.
“[Campus Kitchens] is great,” she said. “It really does help.”
jbondeson@gazette.net
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