Saturday’s Community Harvest Supper’s tagline is “Come as strangers, leave as friends.”
It’s fitting, then, that the organization of Saturday’s Community Harvest Supper brought together churches, the town government, students and teachers, area nonprofits devoted to providing resources for homelessness and hunger, a seniors group, and a pottery group.
According to organizer and ConVal senior Elizabeth Guptill, the primary purpose of the event is that coming together and meeting one another, the resources for raising awareness of local hunger struggles and resources secondary.
“When you think of community, you often think of small towns where everyone knows your name,” Guptill wrote in an email. “You think of the cheerful Hallmark Movies with the intertwined histories and large gatherings around Christmastime.”
Underlying those impressions is a foundation of support and knowledge of other community members’ needs, she said. “That’s what I wanted to highlight during this dinner.”
The Community Harvest Supper is planned to take place at the Peterborough Community Center, and feature chefs from three of the existing community suppers available in the area, centerpieces from the Recreation Department’s Senior Kraft Korner, serving bowls made by a ConVal pottery class, servers from the high school and a Girl Scout troop from South Meadow School, and representatives from the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter and the Peterborough Food Pantry.
Guptill said she hopes the event helps to lower the barrier to action for participants.
“A lot of power lies in the little things in life,” she wrote, “Just one hour of volunteering or even just one donated can of soup could make a huge difference to someone. Even the smallest step is still moving you forward.”
She said she’s grateful for the support co-organizers have offered, making her feel included even when her class and work schedules kept her from attending meetings. Guptill said she was most recently touched by the Select Board’s unanimous agreement to waive the fees for renting the Community Center.
The chefs for the event are the same who cook for regular community suppers: Dwight Schenk, who cooks for the Wednesday suppers at the Unitarian Universalist Church, is set to attend.
There are additionally suppers on Mondays at the Union Congregational Church and Tuesdays at All Saints’ Church. Peterborough’s suppers regularly serve between 50 and 100 people.
“The purpose of the supper is multifold,” Harriet Dichico of All Saints’ Church said. “For the food insecure, for those looking for socialization, and for those who can benefit from social interaction.”
She said All Saints’ dinners bring in people from Antrim, Greenfield, Hancock, Peterborough and Jaffrey.
“We have friendsgivings, we can have community-giving [too],” said Kathy Boss of the Peterborough Food Pantry about Saturday’s event.
Boss said she looks forward to educating the community about the food pantry during the supper, because although there is some overlap in attendance between community suppers and the food pantry, “there’s absolutely people out there who don’t know that they can use the food pantry.”
She said that some people stay away out of fear of being stigmatized.
“One of the things that’s super important to the food pantry is respect and dignity … people go from clients, to customers, to friends,” she said. “The pantry does more than give people food, it also gives a sense of community, and being cared for, and I think people need that as much as the food.”
Boss said that local hunger is “not something we see every day, because we’re a fairly well-to-do community.”
She said that in cities, poverty tends to concentrate in particular neighborhoods.
“Because we’re a rural community, there are people right next door to you that could be hunger-insecure,” she said, or have a person sleeping on their sofa for lack of housing options.
Boss noted that the Food Pantry, MATS, and End 68 Hours of Hunger developed from the community’s awareness of a problem.
“I think it’s possible for us … to eliminate hunger and homelessness. And boy, would I ever love for something to come out of this that had that as its mission,” she said.
The supper will start at 5 p.m. and continue to 6:30.
The menu consists of ham, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, beans, and bread, and attendees are invited to bring a dessert to contribute to the event themselves.