The Maundy Fall Re-Launch

I want to officially introduce myself, as we have not been able to meet due to this pesky pandemic. My name is Vienne Chan. Last November I  became the Cathedral's Food & Hospitality Coordinator when Alberto left us. Many of you volunteered at the Cafe before the pandemic. I want to invite you to consider returning to volunteer at the Maundy Cafe. If you’ve always had an interest in volunteering at the cafe, I’d like to invite you as well to consider volunteering.  If you would like to connect with me, my email address is vienne@thecathedral.ca . After August 17 I will also have some time to meet in person or on zoom. So send me a message and we can put something on the calendar! 

For a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes at the cafe, you might want to check out The Maundy Cafe's Instagram. 

I want to take this opportunity to introduce to you my incredible volunteer coordinators: Ethyle and Holly. They have been working tirelessly putting together our volunteer schedule. I am so so grateful for their help! I could not do this without them!! Moving forward, all volunteer inquiries and schedule changes will go through them. As the volunteer coordinators, they will have the most accurate information about what is going on at the Cafe.

It's been quite a ride navigating the changing restrictions. But, I'm proud to say that our efforts kept us safe and saw us double the number of lunches we are giving out. On the last two Mondays the Cafe was open, 138 lunches were served.

Throughout the pandemic we served lunches “to-go” Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday each week. We also launched new meals in partnership with different community groups. With the help of the Seaforth Highlanders - who call the Cathedral their church home - the first Friday of every month is "Seaforth Friday".  Volunteers from the Seaforth regiment prepare and serve lunch “to-go".  It has been wonderful to have them take part in the work we are doing.  

We also partnered with First Baptist Church to serve Tuesday night dinners. First Baptist has been serving Tuesday night dinners for years, through their shelter program.  They are undergoing a two year renovation project and needed a space to serve dinner. David Nacho, director of Street Ministries at First Baptist, asked if their team could come and join us because he is so impressed with our program.  Marnie and Andrew and myself have been meeting on a weekly basis to plan the future vision of the cafe.  These new partnerships are a result of those sessions. We want to be able to share the vision of the cafe with other organizations! 

We have also been hard at work planning for September and the rest of the fall. 

 A note before I continue: all these plans are depend on a smooth transition into the fall with Covid de-strictions (yes, I made up that word). So we are being cautiously optimistic about our plans. With that in mind, this is our fall schedule:

Aug 30th - September 3rd: Team Week:  Details are being finalized. What is certain: volunteers will get invited to one session during this week. (not the whole week)

Sept 6th-Oct 1st: Maundy-to-go: We will keep the same three day a week lunch schedule for September. Lunches will still be "to-go" This will give us time to transition to our new indoor format. The Seaforth Friday on October 1 will be our last outside meal

October 4- Dec 17th: The Maundy relaunch

So what is the relaunch, you ask?

Below you will find a pdf  document with a detailed schedule. The document also contains  our volunteer signup sheet. Please read through everything carefully before you sign up, as every day of the week is a different format!

(Volunteers: Please email your responses to maundycafe@thecathedral.ca. If you are not yet a volunteer, but would like to be, please get in touch with Holly and Ethyle at the above email address)

We will still be serving meals five days a week. We are very excited to announce that we will be expanding the cafe to include a special drop-in Wednesday. On Wednesdays we will be open longer and each week we wil have a different activity for our community. We will not be servinga meal, but healthy, yummy snacks and drinks will be available.  On Fridays we will serve brunch and once a month there will be a Fresh Food Market. Guests will be able to choose exactly what they want and only pay for the items they buy. We will also have one or two free vegetable items available from Stable Harvest Farms. We are very excited about this and the plan is to eventually expand to twice a month. 

Thank you to everyone who has volunteered, donated, and supported us in other ways during the pandemic.