Our Community Place is the amazing story of a community centered grass roots project and a long time vision that is soon to become a reality.
Our Community Place seeks . .
- To accommodate, foster and provide activities and programs related to personal growth and community well being.
- To be a resource in the community for individuals seeking information or services already provided by other organizations.
- To educate and empower individuals toward self-sufficiency, thus creating social capital for the community at large.
- To nurture a community that appreciates diversity and sees differences and conflict as opportunities for spiritual growth.
Our vision is to build, around our free noon meal, an atomosphere of love, safety, education, spiritual awareness, healing, and fun. We want to create a community center that functions on the same principles as our Soup Kitchen: anyone in the world is welcome to help or participate.
We are dedicated to breaking down barriers that tend to separate humans from the joys to be experienced in loving community. We are particularly dedicated to including the very poor and disadvantaged in our activities. We have found over the years that incredible healing potential, for all parties, exists in the simple act of sitting down and eating or socializing together across social barriers.
Our programs include . .
Free Food For All Soup Kitchen
In June of 1992, Ron Copeland bought the Little Grill Restaurant in Harrisonburg, VA. By October of that year, he had started closing the restaurant on Mondays and offering a free noon meal to “anyone in the world.” From the beginning, Ron’s vision for the Soup Kitchen was that it would be a cooperative community meal rather than specifically a charitable meal, everyone would be welcome, all work would be volunteer, and meals would be served “family style.” He placed a container on the front counter of the restaurant marked “Soup Kitchen” and the patrons of the Little Grill responded with wild generosity.
In a few short years, the Soup Kitchen had become a phenomenon in its own right, a truly free meal, with no strings attached, which served a wide variety of people, and maintained a joyous and mutually respectful atmosphere. The Soup Kitchen began to maintain a bank balance well above what was required to produce a weekly meal, and Copeland and other regular volunteers started eying up an old Salvation Army building that lay dormant on a ¾ acre lot across the street from the restaurant, as a potential new home for the Soup Kitchen. After a little while, the vision went beyond simply a new home for the Soup Kitchen, and began to take shape as a community center.
Our Community Place
When we started the Our Community Place project, we knew that it was a huge – seemingly impossible task. The idea of a small group of people with full time jobs, no income besides donations, no skilled laborers in the group, and no paid staff renovating a building that had asbestos floor tiles, old cracked windows, a leaky roof, no plumbing, no electricity and defunct heating system seemed absurd.
Chronology
1998: A vision began to emerge of a community center that would expand on the Soup Kitchen concept: an educational, community-building, self-improvement oriented, community center with Soup Kitchen philosophy at its heart and soul – “Anyone in the World is welcome!” – as Ron said in one early OCP Journal article “a whole new vision of church and school.”
1999: OCP incorporated and became a 501(c)(3) organization – allowing individuals to make tax-deductible donations to the effort.
2000 - 2001: Two years of intensive “Fun”- Raising (yard sales, spaghetti dinners, variety shows, newsletters, music festivals, raffles, etc.) produced enough money to give us the confidence on January 1st 2001 to purchase the building placing $7,000 down – owing the balance of $58,000 on January 1st 2002.
An ideological split rocked the board, causing soul searching, confusion, and bad feelings. Some board members, who eventually left the board, were suspicious of Ron’s leadership style and resented his expressions of Christian faith that were becoming more and more apparent through the newsletter. Some in this group also believed that leadership should be shared by any and every person and toward that end that the board should be dissolved.
2002: OCP used “Community Financing” (a financing method in which $1000 loans are taken from individuals in the community in order to finance a project in lieu of going to the bank) and the wild generosity of many people in the community to pay for the building in cash. Asbestos was removed, we installed new windows, paid for a new roof, and got water and sewer hooked up from the street to the building.
2003: The board devoted most of 2003 to developing a “Comprehensive Plan” for building renovation and kitchen installation that culminated in a set of professionally engineered floor plans, and plumbing schematics. Ron Copeland and others turned the Little Grill into a worker-owned collective, and Ron entered Eastern Mennonite Seminary, thus diverting some leadership energy from the project. At this point, after 10 issues, the newsletter became defunct.
2004: We demolished the interior cinder block walls, cut the concrete floor, dug trenches for the interior plumbing and removed the considerable debris, all with volunteer labor.
2005: The interior plumbing was completed and the concrete floor was re-poured.
2006: The last of the Community Financing debts were paid off, after which the building was completely paid for! We framed new walls and increased the size of our little community garden using much of the produce for Soup Kitchen.
Ron Copeland graduated from Seminary and announced that he will be starting a new Mennonite congregation, The Early Church, which will use the OCP building for public services once the building is complete. Although Ron remains central in both OCP and the Early Church, the two will remain organizationally separate.
For the first time ever, OCP decided to give a $200/mo. stipend to Ron as he began to devote the bulk of his working time to OCP. Most of the rest of Ron’s personal expenses began to be covered by private donors interested in the completion of the OCP and/or the creation of the Early Church project. This account was/is handled through the Virginia Mennonite Board of Missions.
2007: The electricity was mostly completed. The walls were dry walled and painted with a primer. The ceiling was insulated. The handicap ramp was completed.
2008: The electricity was completed on Valentine's Day. There are still minor electrical projects in the works, but nothing to keep us from opening. The bathrooms are beautifully tiled and usable (yay!) Lighting is finished, drop ceilings are in, the hood is up in the kitchen, kitchen walls are tiled and we are preparing to paint the kitchen floor. . . . We're almost there.
In the context of our society of instant gratification the OCP project may have seemed to have taken a long time, but from our perspective, it has been an amazing process which has grounded itself deeper and deeper into the community.
The generosity and faith of this community has been so beautiful over the years. Thanks again for your support. As the years pass, you will have the pleasure of seeing your investment in community pay off. And of course you will always be welcome at Soup Kitchen and the OCP at any time – you and anyone else with a belly button.
Our vision is that once the building is renovated and bustling with activity, the organization will be self-sustaining. The Soup Kitchen vision since the beginning has been that we do not exist only to serve the economically poor, but that we exist to be of service to all humanity. One of the magical aspects of our Soup Kitchen, as anyone can attest who has eaten there, is that we all eat together, and we serve the food family style – no one waits in a soup line. One of our long-term goals is to work toward overcoming unhealthy states of mind with regard to class differences, so that people from all walks of life can learn to eat, play and learn from each other, together. In this system, people who wish to contribute money for food, classes, etc. will be encouraged to do so and people who cannot afford to spend any money will be welcome to join in activities without any stigma. In this way, our vision is that ultimately, OCP will be self-sustaining.
Below is a list of activities, organizations and services that may be found at OCP once the building project is complete:
- Soup Kitchen
- Birth Matters
- The Early Church Project
- Community Garden
- Skyline Literacy Coalition
- The Black's Run Community Bicycle Project
- Home School Groups
- 12-Step Groups
- Craft Nights
- Coffee Houses
- Lecture Series
- OCP Newsletter
- Soup Kitchen Theater
- Free Speech Days/ Public Debates
- Yoga Classes
- Music and Food Festivals
- Conflict Mediation Training
- Horse Shoe Tournaments
- Black’s Run Restoration Awareness
- Recycling Education
- Work Hub for the Unemployed
- Networking to Other Community Services
Who is making decisions?
OCP is managed by a self-perpetuating Board of Directors. We want to start informational potlucks back up in the New Year - we will hold them quarterly once the building is finished so that the board can keep the public informed about all matters of importance.
We are at a point at which we could use another shot in the arm of money. The building is paid for and we have very little debt, but during the next few months, things will move faster than they have moved before – ceilings, tile, fixtures, etc. will all cost money. If you would like information about donating money click here. Our Community Place is a non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-deductible organization.
For media reports click here.