The Pahoa Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry started small.
A few years ago, manager Thomas Manago, his family and a friend’s family began serving up stew plates to Puna residents. The group was sharing its own dinner: Manago said Tuesday that he’d just wanted to “come out and eat in the open,” but saw a need to do something more.
Soup kitchen meals are prepared and given out every day of the week in Hawaii County, at a host of different sites. Pahoa’s is one of these sites, and according to census data, Puna has one of the highest districtwide poverty rates in the county, along with South Hilo and Ka‘u.
Manago watched as demand for meals got higher. He wanted to continue meeting that demand, but needed to either form or become part of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in order to partner with the Hawaii Food Basket, which provides food for many of the other soup kitchens.
Eventually, Manago partnered with his church, New Hope Puna. The Pahoa Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry is faith-based, he said, and community-oriented.
“We go out and we look for different agencies to volunteer to do this,” said Jo Ann Abiley of the Hawaii Food Basket.
In the first two years, the Pahoa kitchen ran on a shoestring budget, “out of this pocket,” Manago said, pointing at his own gray shorts. There were utensils, broilers and pots to buy. Manago soon found a sponsor for the paper goods (forks and knives, plates, gloves for volunteers to wear), and over time more donors stepped in.
On Tuesday, volunteers began arriving at the site of Pahoa’s downtown farmers market on Kauhale Street well before the soup kitchen was set to serve. Some set up folding tables beneath the market tents, where the food and the diners would be shielded from the light rain that was falling.
The soup kitchen started dishing up meals under the tents in March. The group had been based in the recreation center across the street, but ultimately moved because the center does not have a commercial kitchen (they now use the commercial kitchen at Aloha Lehua Cafe).
Volunteers continued to trickle in, most wearing black shirts that said “We Care” in pink letters.
Manago asks only two things of the volunteers.
“You gotta love people,” he said. “You gotta have a passion … these people want to eat.”
Sue Martin and her husband, Larry, are the Tuesday cooks. Martin pointed to the covered pots on the table, describing the day’s meal.
“It’s a rainy day, so Larry thought (the food) should be hearty,” Sue Martin said. There were beans and ham with onion and “of course” garlic, Martin continued, along with a vegetarian bean dish.
“Not everybody is a meatarian,” Manago said. Cornbread biscuits, rice, green beans and a dessert of chocolate chocolate-chip cookies rounded out the spread.
“There’s always rice, always dessert,” Sue Martin said. On hotter days, she and Larry prepare things like barbecue chicken and mac salad.
The Tuesday and Friday menus are posted on Facebook the day of the meal. But most outreach is done by word of mouth.
“We try to reach out and find (people),” Manago said.
At this time of the month, people just have received their Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program benefits, so there are less plates served up.
But later in the month, the soup kitchen can serve about 200 plates total, 100 each day.
It was last fall, during Tropical Storm Iselle, that the soup kitchen started to excel. Before Iselle, the volunteers were used to preparing meals for 60 people a day, a number that more than doubled after the storm, to 200.
Manago said it was important for people to help care for their communities, particularly in places like Pahoa, where poverty rates are higher than in the rest of the county.
“It’s a lot of work,” Abiley said. “It’s not easy work to come get the food and then prepare it and pass it out. Since they took on the pantry, it’s even harder.”
“We’re really happy we can do that,” Manago said.
The Pahoa Soup Kitchen takes place from 4:30-5:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Fridays at the Pahoa town farmers market tents on Kauhale Street. The Food Pantry is open the second Friday of each month.
During the month of September, Maika‘i customers at Sack N Save can donate to the Pahoa Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry to have a portion of the donation matched by Foodland.
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.