The Martlet

How did the Vikes women’s rowing team spend last Friday night? Were they hard at work on rowing machines in the McKinnon Gym? Were they out at Elk Lake, oblivious to the cold and dark? Were they grooving to overplayed top-40s remixes at Club 9one9? No! They were serving food at the Street Café, at the Mustard Seed Street Church and Food Bank. This is something they do now.

“I volunteered here with a group of my friends once before for a project for school,” says second-year Alexandria Crawshaw, “and I thought it would be really cool to bring the rowing team into it.”

The Street Café is operated by the Mustard Seed and is staffed by volunteers. Its purpose is to give a restaurant-type experience to the Victoria street community and those otherwise lacking money for food. Usually more than 60, and sometimes more than 100, guests show up between 7–9 p.m. on Friday nights to eat at the Street Café.

A core group of around 10–15 regular volunteers from Lambrick Park Church operate the Street Café kitchen. They are joined every second Friday by a group of volunteers from somewhere in the community — the Vikes rowers being the most recent.

The Vikes spent several hours on the precedign Thursday preparing food, and then most of the volunteers from the rowing team came to the Café on Friday for opening, serving and subsequent cleanup.

Despite its name, the Mustard Seed Street Church and Food Bank is not housed in an architectural church, but in a former commercial building on Queens Avenue — Mustard Seed’s third location since opening in Victoria. The Street Café setting consists of a room full of small round tables adjacent to the service window of the kitchen.

On one side of the room are a chair and microphone, serving as a casual open mic to guitarists and singers from among the guests and volunteers. The neighbouring room is the building’s main hall; on Friday nights a movie is played on a roll-down projection screen. The décor at the Mustard Seed building varies between polished wood and linoleum, giving the location a part–community centre, part–dining hall feel. Towards closing, diners linger at their tables chatting while volunteers proffer the remaining desserts.

The Mustard Seed Food Bank is the largest on Vancouver Island. In addition to hosting the Street Café, Mustard Seed hands out more than 6 000 food hampers per month at its location on Queens Avenue, and holds another group meal on Saturday nights, staffed mainly by community volunteers and entertained by a live band.

About 10 members of the Vikes team helped out at the café on Jan. 27.

“It was kind of short notice for this,” said Crawshaw, “but we’re planning another one in February, so hopefully lots more people will show up for that one.”