The Progress Center served more than 10,000 meals this summer

NORWAY — The Progress Center’s Community Kitchen for nine weeks this summer served a total of 10,700 meals to those in need of healthy and sustainable food.
The Progress Center’s Community Kitchen team, with help from volunteer groups and TPC employees served breakfast and lunch to the hungry and food insecure in Oxford Count. In comparison, TPC’s Community Kitchen put out 1,400 meals over eight weeks in the summer of 2019.
The Progress Center, at 35 Cottage St., has a long history of providing free nutritious food to all members of the Oxford Hills community in need. However, this year COVID-19 put at risk families and families that had never before experienced food insecurity, in impossible situations.
The Progress Center’s Community Kitchen team came together in early April to transform the community dinners and multiple food pantries to meet CDC guidelines for social distancing. With a plan in place and compassionate TPC employees and volunteers, the team tackled the next hurdle — hungry kids.
The Progress Center made a commitment to the children in our community to ensure that any children in Oxford Hills who needed a healthy meal during the summer months could have one at no charge. TPC participated in the Summer Food Service Program, which helps guide such programs.
Since the end of the meal distribution, TPC’s Community Kitchen has still helped address community food insecurity. The Community Kitchen team has continued Community Dinners every Thursday, but instead of a sit-down dinner, the Kitchen created a drive up dinner. TPC’s Community Kitchen has also kept up a Meals on Wheels program for elderly members of Oxford Hills, as well as a Feel Better Food program for recent patients released from the hospital and their families fed.
To learn more about the Progress Center’s Community Kitchen, visit progresscentermaine.org/special-projects/community-kitchen.