In 1999, on the day of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin (November 21) a group of young people decided to launch a meal centre in front of the Church of Ilya the Prophet in Sofia's housing district Drouzhba. They started to collect money and ideas and later, on January 9, 2000 they cooked their first meal. At the time, the kitchen provided food to 35 poor and homeless people. Sixteen years later some 400 people receive hot food every Sunday.

Moni Marinov who is one of the organizers of this initiative and is currently in charge of the entire process told Radio Bulgaria about the people who come to the soup kitchen:

“All kinds of people come to our meal centre for food - from elderly people who live alone on meager pensions to large families. A family with seven children who lived at a bus stop came to us for food recently. We also have immigrants and refugees. Many people from Bulgaria's countryside travel to Sofia to receive food. We never turn anyone away. Sometimes, when we run out of hot food we give out packages of rice or other foodstuffs for them to take home. At this time we do not need any food, we have supplies that will last for at least several months. Of course, we stock up periodically, because we provide food to almost 400 people.”

One of the main tasks of the people who run the soup kitchen is to find enough money, so the establishment can meet all health and safety standards. The meal centre has no delegated budget and the money comes from donations.

“What is really important to us is that every Sunday, around 400 people come here not just for a hot meal but also to receive food that will last them one whole day. Some elderly people live on our meals until Wednesday or Thursday. Our food package consists of 700 ml of hot food, a big sandwich with three meatballs, bread, fruit and milk.”

But the duties of the volunteers do not end with the cooking and the distribution of the food. They are also engaged with education. The volunteers work with children, organize Sunday classes and participate in a series of charity campaigns.

“We have a very streamlined system here. Even though all people are volunteers, there is a hierarchy in our organization with three different teams. The first one consists of nearly 20 people who are engaged in educational and cultural activities - our website, our Facebook account and publish a weekly newspaper. The second team consists of young and energetic people who are constantly engaged in charity campaigns. They recently launched a campaign aimed at collecting sports balls. We made a donation to a school for children with special needs in the town of Velingrad and now we are trying to help as many Bulgarian schools as possible. We launched a campaign named Donate a Blanket. It turned out that half of the people who receive food from our kitchen are beggars and sleep wherever they can so blankets are something they really need. Each Sunday we have various educational activities with the children of the needy families, because it turned out that most of them do not go to school. We help these people with clothes. Recently, one of the children received a second-hand computer and was extremely happy. Our main team works in the kitchen. Their shift starts on Saturday when we prepare the lunch and continues on Sunday, so this is a shift that is really tough.”

The kitchen staff consists mostly of young people. Anyone who wants to help the team is more than welcome. Most people who come to the church on Sunday are lonely. They do not come only for the hot food, but to for the social contacts and the attention. 

“Each Christian church is a place where hope has a home. Faith, hope and love are what bring us all here. Faith in God and our Orthodox religion makes us better and stronger people. Without faith we are doomed as a country and as a nation .”

English version: Kostadin Atanasov

Edited in English: Milena Daynova