SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A favourite downtown hangout for the city's youth is now feeding more than the young people's appetite for wholesome company.
Brian Sangris takes a heaping plate of spaghetti and meat sauce with friend Dillon Betsina at the SideDoor Youth Centre during the first Friday night dinner held this month. - photo courtesy of SideDoor Youth Ministries |
Every Friday since last month, teens dropping by the Side Door Youth Centre have been met by the aroma of spaghetti and meat sauce, nachos, grilled cheese sandwiches, and french fries, and welcome to hearty servings of the free dinners.
"We try to keep at least some of the food groups in there," said SideDoor program director Christopher Cobbler, about the meals that are now being offered to the teens.
Young people have already been flocking to the youth centre over the years to hang out with friends, play foosball, pool, watch TV, and use the computers in the alcohol-free, drug-free, and smoke-free environment. But in the rush to get to the 50 Street hangout and be with friends, some of the young people were showing up without having eaten.
"We're realizing that some of them are hungry by the time they get to SideDoor. Sometimes they haven't eaten dinner and in some cases they say they've eaten but they just didn't get enough food," he said about why the dinner program was started. "We try to provide as much as we can so they can eat as much as they want, and if they want seconds, they can have seconds."
Typically about 30 teens will be at the SideDoor on a Friday night, and almost all of them have been receptive to the dinner, Cobbler said.
Brian Sangris, a student who has enjoyed hanging out at the SideDoor with friends for several years, said before the youth centre started serving dinners on Friday nights, he would get something to eat at a Chinese restaurant, then head over to play pool. But not all the teens could afford to buy food, or had parents providing meals for them.
City shelters only offer food to teenagers who are accompanied by an adult, Cobbler said, which leaves the most needy young people who are on their own, out. But he was hesitant to compare the SideDoor dinner program to a soup kitchen.
"I wouldn't say it's a soup kitchen not just because we don't serve soup but because we try to incorporate everybody, in the sense that even if they ate a good meal we're not going to stop them from eating," Cobbler said.
As much of the food as possible is currently provided by Food Rescue, and the SideDoor foots the bill for the rest. Because the Food Rescue organization cannot provide ingredients such as ground beef and other meats to the program, SideDoor is hoping to receive help from some of the city's grocery stores.
The dinner program is presently scheduled to continue through March.
