SCRANTON- Making a difference one meal at a time.  

The Arrupe House at Mulberry Street and Clay Avenue provides for the Scranton area through the We Care Program.  The program happens every week on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon and is a volunteer, donation-based program that makes and delivers hot meals to organizations in the area such as Friends of the Poor and low-income housing.

The We Care Program started during the pandemic in fall 2021 when the office was empty and the Center for Service and Social Justice (CSSJ) wanted to continue its service to the community. Lorena Pacheco Jimenez, the coordinator for local services and the We Care Program, explained that the We Care Program started through a Zoom meeting and then moved into a basement.    

“They got everybody who worked in the office to kind of cook something,” she said, “I’m going to cook this and the other employees are going to cook this. They got the meals together and went to deliver it. That’s kind of how the idea started,” Pacheco said.

The We Care Program has a membership with the Weinberg Food Bank, where they are able place donation-based orders from what is available. Victoria Lewis said what typically goes into the meals depends on what is donated that week.  

“The meals that are created have normally a source of protein, a vegetable, and they come with a dessert,” Lewis said.  

Besides the main meals, the program creates snack bags consisting of prepackaged foods, a fruit, and some type of beverage such as water.  

“So the people receiving them have snacks to eat as well along with the meals that are delivered,” Lewis said.  

Roughly 50 to 100 meals are created on a weekly basis and can either be individually packaged per meal or put into trays depending on the organization the student drivers deliver to.  

The We Care Program accepts students, staff and faculty to volunteer throughout the year including the summer.

Friends of the Poor, one of the organizations the We Care Program partners with, has multiple resources for helping people, such as utility assistance, child-based programs, as well as furniture and clothing donations.

“We try to close the gap for food insecurity and help people that way,” Pacheco said in reference to their relationship to helping the Scranton community.

The We Care Program offers multiple services besides cooking, packaging and delivering food.  The program has the Royal Restore Pantry, available to students, staff and faculty, as well as the We Care Cards Program.  The We Care Cards Program is where student volunteers create cards presenting words of affirmation and the cards are then placed into the snack bags for people to receive.  

“I think everybody really appreciates the words of affirmation but having it come from somebody who helps others. … I think it’s really just a great opportunity for students at the university to not only get involved but to help the community that they are involved with,” Lewis said.  

Overall, the We Care Program prioritizes the relationship between the the Scranton and University communities forming together to face food insecurity.

“It’s just seeing how the people that we are helping react shows that the little bit we can do to help try to close the gap with food insecurity.  It really changes their life,” Lewis said.  

For those interested in volunteering with the We Care Program, feel free to reach out to Pacheco at lorena.pecheco@scranton.edu.  

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