Soup Kitchen can now transport people for daily meal, thanks to donation
Date: 3/23/2010
March 24, 2010.By G. Michael Dobbs
Managing Editor
CHICOPEE -- Moving from Center Street to Meadow Street solved many problems for Lorraine's Soup Kitchen. It also created one for about 20 people, but that issue has also been resolved.
Jerry Roy, chair of the board for the food service, explained to Reminder Publications that between 15 and 20 people who regularly took their evening meal at the soup kitchen when it was downtown have no transportation and no means of getting to the new location.
"They were lost in the shuffle," Roy said.
Thanks to an influx of federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) found it could buy a new van designed to transport the elderly and disabled. After discussions with State Rep. Joseph Wagner and other members of the Chicopee legislative delegation, the PVTA management decided to give the soup kitchen a used van.
Wagner said Roy would ask him if he could "get us a bus route," Wagner added with a laugh, that instead, he helped them get a bus.
State Rep. James Welch said the donation was a "great collaboration of government, the community and the PVTA."
Mary MacInnes, administrator of the PVTA, agreed, calling the donation " a collective effort."
"We're very happy to turn this vehicle over to the soup kitchen," she said.
She said the van is about eight years old and has been used to transport seniors and the disabled.
After giving Lorraine Houle, the founder and executive director of the soup kitchen the van's title, MacInnes said, "The key is in the ignition so you're all set to go."
Houle said the donation of the van was "like a dream come true."
"I never expected this to happen," she added.
Volunteers will be given instructions on the operation of the van from PVTA personnel and Roy said the soup kitchen would draw up guidelines about who would be eligible to have the pick-up service and how would they apply for it.
