Students made the lives of underprivileged Philadelphia residents a little bit warmer this past Sunday night at the Hillel Soup Kitchen.
Over 80 guests showed up at Hillel's Warm Winter Evening this weekend to take part in a charity dinner and raffle put on by the Hillel Soup Kitchen and the University City Hospitality Coalition.
Guests ate a spaghetti dinner under festive holiday lights and clapped along to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," "Mercy" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," sung by all-female a cappella group Quaker Notes.
"It's very important that we're giving warm clothes and a good meal to these people," said Dave Weinreb, a College senior and one of the event organizers. "Here, they feel that their stories matter, that the audience is interested in who they are when they're not on the streets."
Guests entered a raffle to win gift certificates to Fresh Grocer, second helpings of spaghetti and a tuna casserole. On the way out, they were given Fresh Grocer bags filled with city-living essentials: hats, socks, gloves, Doritos and the occasional Schick Quattro for Women, a four-blade razor.
The Hillel Soup Kitchen organized an Insomnia Cookies Night last week in which they raised over $800 in funds for the event.
Organizers were pleasantly surprised by the turnout, which was large enough that they were forced to raffle off second helpings of food.
Word of the dinner spread two weeks before the event occurred through Philadelphia residents who frequent Hillel and the six other soup kitchens around campus.
Several student and community groups contributed to the dinner. Volunteers from the Mainline Reform Temple in Ardmore, the Jewish Moishe House and students from Sayre High School in West Philadelphia made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, filled Fresh Grocer bags and set tables.
Weinreb, who is also the community service chair for the Sigma Nu fraternity, ran the show with the help of several Sigma Nu brothers and members of the Hillel Soup Kitchen.
"[The guests] are the people who fell through the cracks of the system, and it's our job to reconcile this, to make them feel human," Weinreb said.
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