During the spring break that never ended, Aaron received an email asking for help at The Warming House, an SBU-sponsored student-led soup kitchen in Olean, NY, believed to be the oldest student-run soup kitchen in the United States. With the students gone for an indefinite amount of time, they needed some help from the faculty and the community to be sure all who needed to be fed would continue to be fed.

So, this summer, Aaron and Bethanne juggled kids and masks and time while trying to help out at the Warming House. During Aaron's first visit, he spoke with Alice Miller Nation and happened to mention that we had a 9 year old who loves to help.  Her response?  Bring her along too...we can find lots of things for her to help with around the kitchen. So, we did. Most often, Bethanne and Claire would head over around 2 pm, while Aaron worked from home and made sure the youngest was staying out of trouble. Dylan has also begun to ask when she can go, so that will have to be tackled in coming summers. 

Without any doubt, this quickly became Claire's favorite activity of the summer.  She helped chop food, prepare meals, set up the assembly line for the meals, collected tickets from the guests, handed out meals, and became the runner for all things needed.

The highlight came, however, when she was asked to fully plan out one of the meals to be served to the guests. She took stock of their pantry, talked with Alice about a balanced, healthy, filling plate, searched and found a recipe, made it at home to be sure it was good, and then helped prepare it and serve it at the Warming House.

Once school started back up again, she hasn't been able to go back and she is missing it. Quite frankly, we all are.  It was a pleasure to work with the students who spent the summer here, making sure it was still going, with the other community members who stepped up to help during this time of need, and most of all, to get to know and work with Alice Miller Nation. 

In order to be sure that through these very difficult times, The Warming House has enough supplies, they are raising money on December 1st, the Giving Tuesday that has become the hallmark of the holiday season.  We would like to help. Please consider giving to our (Claire's) charity of choice. We can give you a million reasons why, but the one that stands out the most to us is that this is the charity that is teaching our very kind nine year old what it REALLY means to help others. She was able to see kindness, in action, every single time she went, and there is no substitute for that.