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Meet and Eat
As VISTA volunteers work the morning away, there is one thing they all look forward to: a service that two ladies from Cedar Rapids have done every weekday for the past year. Joan Force and Deb Sedlacek have awoken every morning to provide AmeriCorps VISTA members with a free, filling meal for lunch, a program that they call “Meet and Eat,” which soon will have served over 20,000 plates of food.
Joan Force gave up her professional organizing business to do the Meet and Eat program, which has been very satisfying for her. “Never kept a job I didn’t enjoy,” Force said, “It’s not the money. If I don’t like what I’m doing, I bail really quick.”
Deb Sedlacek was a retired nurse, who, while sorting out the estate of her late husband, involved herself in some church activities. “That’s an understatement,” Force commented, as Sedlacek has done a great deal of volunteer work for many people.
Force and Sedlacek first proposed the idea for Meet and Eat by talking to Volunteer Recovery Center workers when the VRC was located out of Echo Hill Presbyterian Church. After being asked what the workers did for evening meals, the VRC workers explain that they would either have to go out and buy something, or go without. Feeling that was wrong and unfair to those who were giving their time to the city, Force and Sedlacek put their heads together to come up with a free lunch service for the volunteers. After talking to their interim pastor and getting their idea approved by the church, they used money from Sedlacek’s late husband's estate to begin the program. “It’s a labor of love,” Sedlacek said.
Since their humble beginnings at Echo Hill Presbyterian Church working as a part of the local meal program there, the Meet and Eat program has changed significantly. Now relying on grant money, the program has moved to First Presbyterian, and now has gone to serving volunteers instead of focusing on the community as a whole, giving the workers at the normal meal program locations a bereave from having to serve so many people. Force does not regret this, as it has been easier to serve solely the VISTA members, being the original goal of the program; the VISTAs have had no end of thanks for dedication and sacrifice of Force and Sedlacek.
The relocation to First Presbyterian has been beneficial to both the Meet and Eat program and First Presbyterian. The building manager for First Presbyterian, Eric Stark, has been “a godsend,” says Force, providing extra storage space and free food for Meet and Eat. The church’s kitchen has never been cleaner due to the efforts of a regular volunteer, Amira. “Amira keeps it spit-spot,” Force explains, “she cleans like a little banshee!”
Volunteer help is what has made the Meet and Eat program work as well as it does. When the program began, a group of church volunteers would come in to help make lunch, but as the number of VISTAs swelled, the Meet and Eat program required a little more help from VISTA as volunteer help began to dwindle. “It’s hard [for volunteers] to be here at eight, and not leave until two,” Force said. “It’s easy to be burned out.”
The future of Meet and Eat, however, is uncertain. “We don’t expect to be here a whole lot longer,” Force admitted. Although money has come in from grants, financial difficulties are always in the background. Force and Sedlacek have promised to continue their work until the money from their grants is gone.
As for now, Meet and Eat remains and does not go under-appreciated. A recent survey taken by the Meet and Eat program has shown that most people are incredibly pleased with the work they are doing, even taking in a few suggestions on what to prepare for the coming weeks. “Rabbit and squirrel have been requested,” Force said, chuckling, “but that’s probably not going to happen.”