The smell of bacon and hot biscuits rises from the kitchen at First United Methodist Church, and as the clock hits 7 a.m., the students are ready. One of them opens the adjoining room’s doors, and a stream of people noisily enters. The men and women of all ages and appearances who pile into the room represent Lawrence’s homeless community. The students send smiles to the faces of those now in line when they reveal a feast of eggs, pancakes, hash browns and just about every kind of breakfast food imaginable. The volunteers had been preparing the meal since 6 this morning, and as they take enthusiastic orders from their homeless customers, they forget about any exhaustion or sleepy bugs that may have set in. The customers talk with their student servers in between bites and fill the room with feelings of satisfaction. Jubilee Café is a success once again, but there’s a bittersweet smile on the face of Clark Keffer, who stands alone in the kitchen. The program’s director doesn’t know how many more mornings the café will last. They just aren’t getting the money that they used to.
“Any program like Jubilee Café, that is, one that’s fairly small and runs through volunteers, has a hard time maintaining funds,” Keffer said. “We do apply and get a grant or two each year, but the number of homeless people is consistently increasing. Therefore, our need for money keeps going up, too.”
Keffer said that the program receives about $3,500 in grants each year but that it costs almost $300 per week to run the café. He said that these grants simply weren’t enough.
Jubilee Café didn’t always have to rely on just grants for funding. In 1994, the Episcopal-Lutheran Campus Center at the University of Kansas founded the program. The Center and the Canterbury House, both religious ministries that are located on the KU campus, paid for Jubilee as its most important outreach service. Interns who worked in the ministries donated money to the program, and Father Joe, the priest who initiated Jubilee, paid whatever amount of money out of his salary that was necessary to keep it running. About a year and a half ago, though, Jubilee lost all these funds.
Father Joe, the head priest at the Canterbury House, left KU to start his own church in Tennessee, and the priest who took his place as the House’s director decided to drop Jubilee from the ministry’s budget. The Center for Community Outreach, located in the Kansas Union, has since run the program. But, students direct the Center through donations, and there is no continuous income for Jubilee like there used to be.
Keffer, who started as a volunteer when the café first opened, began directing the program when these changes took place. He said that it had been a huge struggle for the last year and a half to get enough money.
“Since Canterbury stopped supporting us, we’ve been fighting and scratching for money,” Keffer said. “There is no nonstop source of income anymore, so we’ve basically been surviving from fundraiser to fundraiser.”
Every Wednesday night, Jubilee Café puts on a fundraising program called “Breakfast for Dinner.” Any Lawrence resident can come and spend $5 for an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, and Jubilee uses this money for the morning sessions every Tuesday and Friday. Keffer said that the Wednesday night program was not bringing in the funds that he hoped it would.
Kim Koelling, Colleyville, Texas, freshman, has volunteered weekly at Jubilee Café since her arrival at KU last semester. She said that she didn’t understand why there was a funding crisis.
“At the ‘Breakfast for Dinner’ deal, anyone can come and spend only $5 for all they can eat,” Koelling said. “That $5 means almost four meals for someone less fortunate on Tuesday and Friday. Homeless people need food and fellowship more than anything, and all Lawrence people have to do is spend a few bucks once a week to give them those things. But, for some reason, not enough people want to do that.”
Recently, Koelling and two other freshmen volunteers at Jubilee Café came up with another fundraising opportunity. Koelling, who played volleyball all four years for her high school in Texas, decided to attract donations through a volleyball tournament. The tournament will be held at 1 p.m. on May 11 at the Clinton Lake volleyball courts. Anyone interested in playing in or watching the tournament must pay $5. The tournament will feature five-person co-ed teams.
Josh Ibarra, Overland Park, Kan., freshman, helped Koelling organize the fundraiser and said that he hoped it would be a huge success.
“Anyone can come out on Stop Day, bring whoever they want and just have some fun for the afternoon,” said Ibarra, a volunteer at Jubilee since the beginning of the semester. “We’re advertising the event on Facebook, and we already have more than 50 confirmed attendants. At $5 per person, that’s about $250 going toward Jubilee Café right there.
Jubilee Café serves breakfast every Tuesday and Friday morning from 7 a.m. to 8:15 a.m. in the Bailey Hall room at First United Methodist Church, located at Tenth and Vermont Streets. Anywhere from 50 to 70 homeless people attend Jubilee Café on a given Tuesday or Friday, and in just this year, the café has served more than 100,000 meals. Keffer said that it costs about $1.30 to prepare each meal.
The Lawrence Housing Practitioners Panel, who conducted a survey of the city’s homeless community in January of 2005, described a homeless person as an individual who lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. According to the survey, as of January 28, 2005, there were 112 homeless people in Lawrence. Lawrence 6 News did another study of the city’s homeless community in November of 2006 and found that the number had increased to about 413 homeless people in Lawrence, as of January of last year. The news program said that homeless count was Lawrence’s highest ever.
Jubilee Café is not the only support service for the homeless in Lawrence. Four days a week, Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen, or LINK, serves lunch at First Christian Church, located across from the Lawrence Community Shelter at 214 W. 10th Street. The Salvation Army Center is another homeless shelter, at Ninth and New Hampshire Streets.
Ronald Tinkham, 41, has been homeless in Lawrence off and on for almost three years, and he said that none of the services compare with Jubilee Café.
“I don’t like the Salvation Army Center at all,” Tinkham said. “I used to stay at the Community Shelter and eat my meals with LINK, but I just recently started going to the Jubilee thing. I wish it was open every morning.”
Along with those services already mentioned, other organizations serve Lawrence’s homeless population, as well. The Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority, the Pelathe Community Resource Center and Faith Based Initiatives are three other main support services. Even with so many programs, Keffer said that the city still falls short in how it accommodates its homeless.
“Lawrence tries real hard to treat the homeless people around here,” Keffer said. “But, so far, we haven’t been able to make a unified effort. There are several different entities that help the homeless in Lawrence and Douglas County, but somehow, we aren’t able to join together and work on a common front.”
Loring Henderson, the executive director of the Lawrence Community Shelter, knows Keffer and said that Jubilee Café is an excellent program. However, Henderson said that he doesn’t agree with what Keffer said about Lawrence’s lack of unity.
“Up until a few years ago, the Salvation Army was the only true service for the homeless here,” Henderson said. “But since then, several organizations have arisen and really done a great job in providing emergency and housing services. There’s still a lot of work that can be done, but overall, Lawrence is much more accommodating for the homeless than it ever has been.”
Koelling said that she hopes the volleyball tournament can keep Jubilee Café going because it has become something that she looks forward to every week. She said that she has even brought a little tidbit from KU into her fellowship with the attendants.
“We get to sit at tables with the people and actually serve them and talk to them,” Koelling said. “Recently, I’ve been teaching a few of the regulars how to play Sudoku. A couple of them finish their breakfasts more quickly now, just so they can play Sudoku.”
Jubilee Café means more to the people of Lawrence than just a place for games, however. Keffer said that for the homeless people who come every week, it’s a place for food, fellowship and encouragement.
“As long as we can keep getting the funds and volunteers, the program will go on,” Keffer said. “Lawrence really would be a different place without Jubilee Café.”
It has only been 15 minutes since the students brought out the biscuits and gravy, and those customers who were first in the room are already back in line for seconds. A couple of volunteers are back in the kitchen slicing bread and bacon. This morning, Kim and Josh were in charge of the eggs, and the first batch is already gone. Josh whisks away at the egg yokes and milk as Kim turns the stove back on and greases the pans. Other students yell from outside the kitchen for more eggs, but neither Kim nor Josh gets frustrated.
“Sometimes, it’s hard for me to get up so early and have to cook food for almost two hours,” Ibarra said. “I almost slept in, this morning, actually. But, it’s totally worth it because we’re sacrificing a few hours a week for people that suffer almost every hour of the week. It’s a lot of fun, too. I just hope it will all keep going.”