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Mayor of Tralee Mikey Sheehy makes a presentation to co-founder of the Tralee Soup Kitchen, Collette Price to mark the 10th anniversary of the service. Also included are back are volunteers John Leahy, Mary Dolan, Kerry O’Connell and Rev Jim Stephens. Photo by Dermot Crean
THE Mayor of Tralee visited Teach an tSolais on Saturday to mark the 10th anniversary of Tralee Soup Kitchen.
Cllr Mikey Sheehy made a presentation of a plaque in recognition of the service which was founded in October 2012 by Collette Price and Dawn Roberts.
They started off serving soup and sandwiches to people who needed a bit of help at the Teach an tSolais building — adjacent to St John’s Church on Ashe Street — and it has grown from there.
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“People were slow to come at the start,” explained Collette. “We said we’d only ever do soup and sandwiches for people who would collect the food and leave, but we found that they wanted to sit down and eat. So we started doing dinners before Christmas 2012 and it’s gone on from there.”
Now everyone who attends the weekly dinner on Saturday, between 12 noon and 2pm, receives a three course meal and is given a small bag of essentials with tea, coffee and some non-perishable food to take home.
Sadly, there is still a need for the service and numbers have been increasing of late.
“We’ve seen a rise in people coming. In fact, our numbers now are higher at this time of the year, than they have been at the same time in any previous year,” she said.
The demographic at the start used to be single males in their 50s and 60s, but that’s changed over the years.
“It’s all ages now. We have young people in their 20s, students come in too. Many people come in for a chat so there’s a social aspect to it,” said Collette.
While Collette and Dawn (who has since emigrated) started it off, they’ve been helped over the years by a team of volunteers who cook the dinners each Saturday.
“The volunteers are worth their weight in gold! We have a bank of volunteers, so if someone can’t make it, someone else can fill in. They’re an amazing group of people to give up their time.”
Collette said local suppliers have been great supporters of the Soup Kitchen, giving produce for free or at a heavily discounted price.
“We get our meat from Terry’s Butchers which is cooked for us every Saturday and he gives us a really good deal, Terry is great to us. Fenit Fruit and Veg give us potatoes for free. A lady comes in with homemade desserts for us every Saturday and another lady makes the soup for us. People also just drop in things and say ‘are these any good to you’,” said Collette, who also thanked the Church of Ireland for the use of the building.
After 10 years of working in the Soup Kitchen and seeing a different side of life, Collette says she feels more and more grateful for what she has.
“Everybody says ‘oh I wish I had this or that’, but when you see the situation some people are in, you realise you’re quite lucky. We try to provide something to make life a bit easier for someone for two hours on a Saturday.”
If you want to help out in any way, Collette said they will accept any dry, non-perishable goods, while they encourage donations in the form of supermarket vouchers rather than cash. For more on the Tralee Soup Kitchen, check out their Facebook page here.
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