Community Cafe Start-Up

The mission of the Community Café is to provide a safe, welcoming environment for all, while also providing arts, culture, and sporting events for area residents. Boasting a Feed it Forward program, the goal of this service is to provide meals to area residents who cannot leave their homes, food for homeless individuals, and allow for a citizen to enjoy a bite to eat without worrying about having the full fixed price for sandwich and soup. As a resident of the community our director noticed that local citizens, his neighbors, were suffering from a lack of food and resources, including adequate clothing or safe sporting equipment. Understanding that the area is home to a diverse, poverty-stricken population, the primary goal is for the local citizens to have a space to work towards better futures, for themselves and their families. 

Our goals include:

• Increasing mobile food delivery in the Wanskuck area to those unable to leave their homes or who do not have a stable place to live, including food delivery on the weekends.
• Increasing access to adequate clothing for cold weather months to residents in the Wanskuck neighborhood through clothing, coat, and toy drives, twice a year.
• Increasing a sense of community awareness by hosting multicultural, inclusive events for all ages.

The Community Café is currently an empty storefront, with near 1400 square feet in the heart of a neighborhood with high poverty rates in the North End of Providence. Recently, we were awarded our charitable donation status through the State of Rhode Island, and tax exempt status. We are fortunate to have IOBY fiscally sponsoring our organization as we progress the stages of our 501(c)(3) status by February 2020.

Next, we need to remodel the space to make sure it is functional for all our purposes, especially the provision of food. Once the space is functional, we will begin by ensuring the following: 

• The café will transport food to 100 shut-ins, elderly, disabled, and homeless persons weekly, within 5-7 months (October-November 2019).
• The café will host one clothing, coat, and toy drive within six months (November 2019) to provide adequate winter clothing to at least 15 adults and 30 children.
• The Community Café will host a youth and adult basketball tournament, youth art and music afterschool classes, and a multicultural community day to recognize the diversity within the Wanskuck neighborhood within 12 months (June 2020).

Community care and mutual aid are the basic purpose of a community. Our mission is to serve the North End of Providence with a Community Café that provides space for our community to come together and create programs that help lift each other up as a community, such as clothing drives, musical entertainment, and sporting events. Currently, there are no community events in the area to bring the people together, while other nearby communities host frequent events. Our elderly and disabled people are suffering from a lack support. We need to assist them with food and visitation.  We want to create a common location where everyone in the community feels welcome, supported, and encouraged to work together to solve the problems that threaten all of us including poverty, addiction, isolation, alienation, a lack of education, and resources.  We recognize that one of the biggest hurdles preventing this kind of radical community support is a lack of safe, accessible community space that allows us to come together, understand, and support one another.

In order to realize this project, we are calling on our neighbors in the North End, and beyond, to donate what they can to get the Community Café off the ground. We need to turn our empty storefront into a thriving, sustainable community space. We are asking you to please make a contribution today so we can create a space that supports the North End community for generations to come.