The Bellingham Community Meal on the last Saturday of the month has been a tradition for David Meyer. Attending since the ’90s, the meal was a source of food and connection during the 22 years he was sometimes homeless and even now, housed in Skagit County.
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Meyer showed up right on time and chatted with friends as he and about 100 other people went into the Assumption Catholic Church gym on Cornwall Avenue.
With paper placemats on two lines of tables, and little bouquets of flowers, volunteers served guests a hearty meal of chicken, stuffing, eggs, collard greens, ham, onions and mashed potatoes, with ice cream, cookies and berries for dessert. Some attendees, mostly from the Lighthouse Mission, chatted with friends or the people around them, while others ate quietly by themselves.
Since the early 1980s, the Bellingham Community Meal program has been providing one free meal a month as a parish program of the church — at one point serving 20,000 meals in one year.
But behind the scenes, the future of the Bellingham Community Meal program is uncertain as numbers of guests and volunteers have dropped over time.
It’s one of only a few community meal programs in the area: Opportunity Council’s Maple Alley Inn provides hot lunches twice a week, the United Church of Ferndale hosts a community meal monthly, alongside a couple of other meal distribution programs.
Challenges with volunteerism and concerns about liability from Whatcom Catholic led to a meeting in November to determine the meal’s future.
To save the meal in its current form, church leadership said the board must have a stable board and enough volunteers to serve 100 every month, hire security during the meal and prove it is following all county and Catholic Church policies.
By Dec. 31, the board must communicate its financial status and expected number of volunteers for the next three meals to the church leadership, and by April, must determine the program’s ability to meet all requirements.
As a parish program of the Assumption Church, the church has a legal responsibility for what happens at the meal, said Father Jeffrey Moore of Whatcom Catholic, but lacks the resources to conduct needed oversight to make sure the program is meeting all the church’s policies.
Moore said he had previously been under the impression the group was an independent nonprofit. But after learning it wasn’t, Moore now has access to the program’s bank account, which has around $50,000 built up from donations over the years.
“If they’re self-sufficient and have the liability issues figured out, they can use the [Assumption] gym as much as they want,” Moore said.
Dan Welickovitch, board president since January, said in December that despite the board only having three members currently, he’s recruited enough people to have a full seven-person board by the end of the month. But he said the labor that will go into meeting the church’s requirements may be unrealistic, and outweigh the benefits of the service.
Historically, the monthly event was an indoor, sit-down meal. Lee Langdon, who moderated the November meeting and has been “peripherally involved” in the program for over a decade, said in 1985, the program served nearly 20,000 meals in one year and they had a strong volunteer and donation base.
Board member Marie Gonzalez, who has been involved with the meal for 17 years, said when she started, the meal used to resemble a “banquet hall,” serving 300-400 people with professional chefs cooking the meals and wait staff walking around to refill glasses.
But the pandemic impacted attendance and operations. Now, the meal is usually held outside, in a to-go brunch format, and serves roughly 100 people a month. (It was held inside in November due to the cold.) Volunteers cook the meals.
“For a number of years, the meal has limped along …” Langdon said at the November meeting. “So, in my mind, what we want is a thriving organization, and it was for a number of years, and now it’s not thriving quite that way.”
Welickovitch, 42, wants to see the meal continue and expand to serve more people. He discovered the the meal in 2015, seeking community, and became a regular guest. Since becoming president, he made changes to cut costs and simplify the program.
He acknowledged the challenges with board turnover and finding consistent volunteers.
“I’ve tried to design the functions of putting on the meal to meet the volunteer supply,” he said, and to serve the clientele presented to them. “It worked, and it’s been working.”
Welickovitch, who is not paid for this work, said he wants to focus on community building with the meal to give people a place to meet, talk and get to know one another.
“Just doing that, in itself, is worth it,” he said. “It’s worth it just to get together with a group of people and have a good meal and have a good time.”
Welickovitch said he worked 11 hours the day before the November meal to prepare, and several hours of unpaid time every other week. He consolidated chores that used to be held by multiple people due to the lack of board members, so he handles all aspects of the meal now: managing volunteers, planning the meals, cooking, cleaning and more.
Langdon said Welickovitch was the reason the meal has continued this year, but she thinks a “one-man-band” running the meal is not sustainable.
The “trigger” for the reevaluation of the program was an email Welickovitch sent to volunteers in January. The letter prompted concerns from longtime members and volunteers about the way he described some homeless people, saying people are scared of them. Moore said he received requests from some backers of the meal to remove Welickovitch from his post on the board.
Welickovitch told CDN he was trying to emphasize the real risks people face living on the street and explain why some housed people might not come to the meal. He said he wants to meal to be “socially responsible” and do more than “just feeding people.”
Moore emphasized that serving the poor is a “necessary and important thing to do,” but that with the meal’s evolution, “it’s just very hard to support,” he said.
The program’s next meal and board meeting are on Dec. 28. There, board members will discuss the meal’s future: should the program stay with the church and try to meet the requirements, find another nonprofit host, become its own nonprofit, or fold entirely?
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
