Souper Bowl Raises Money For Damiano Center
DULUTH, Minn. —It may be super bowl Sunday, but I’m here at the Pilgrim Congregational Church where we’re having a “soup-er” bowl of our own.
The Souper Bowl of Caring project started in Columbia, South Carolina by the Spring Valley Presbyterian Church’s youth group in 1990, which used the widely celebrated Super Bowl as an opportunity to relieve hunger locally. Since then the program expanded across the nation and was eventually brought here to Duluth by Pastor Carla Bailey, with this being the second year.
“Last year, we were able to contribute $1,400 to Loaves and Fishes. This year, our program is even larger and we hope to raise $2,00 to give to Damiano.” said Pilgrim Congregational Church Pastor Carla Bailey.
“And actually she’s a big soup maker, she made a whole ton of chicken soup,” said Bailey’s husband, Warren Turner.
This year’s soup-er bowl featured White Chicken Chili, Indonesian Carrot Soup, and Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup as of the options available in a two and a half cup container that was available for $10. All profits will go towards the Damiano Center, Duluth’s largest emergency meal provider. The Damiano Center not only provides three meals a day for people, but they also distribute clothes and food, as well as career and personal counseling.
“Our youth group did one of the soups, they made the rice chicken soup on Wednesday evening,” said Bailey. “I had a team of people on Friday morning but we had a number of teams so that we could make five different kinds of soup for this program.”
In total, it took five different teams of people with roughly four to six people on each team to supply all of the soup offered.
“Some people bought $200 worth of soup,” said Bailey. “Other people bought one to two containers to take home with them, to either eat today or freeze for some other day.”
“And there’s quite a variety too, because we have one vegetarian and one that’s spicy,” said Turner.
“We wanted to make one soup at least vegan for those that are cautious about what they eat,” added Bailey.
The Pilgrim Congregational Church looks forward to future soup-er bowl events, and they also encourage other churches and local organizations to participate.
“But we’re pretty sure that we’re getting close to the max because I’m not sure where we would store our extra soup to prepare and sell,” said Bailey.
