Dedicated seniors help feed the hungry at Moncton soup kitchen

The Ray of Hope soup kitchen in Moncton has seen a spike in the number of people needing meals and a group of dedicated seniors are doing their part to help.

“I am better to do something for my fellow man than to just sit home feeling sorry for myself,” said Adrienne Fagan who started volunteering at the soup kitchen several days a week after her husband of 73 years recently passed away.

“She would show up every day if you would let her,” Brenda Caverly Ray who is the head chef at Ray of Hope in St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic church in Moncton.

Fagan said that helping to feed the hungry has given her a purpose again.

“I didn’t think I would be wanted here because of my age,” she said.

Far from it, some of the most dedicated volunteers in the hot, busy kitchen that serves several hundred people a day are over 80 years old said Caverly.

83 year old Ivan Desroches, who is always eager to share a joke, “I am a bit of a tease you know,” has been sharing meals and his smile at the soup kitchen for the past 8 years.

“I do a couple of hours every day and I enjoy it,” he said.

“You can’t be in a bad mood around the man he is love. He is what volunteering is all about,” said Caverly.

Seeing the number of people who can’t afford food grow so quickly amid the increases in gas, grocery and housing prices has been hard on both of the seniors’ hearts.

“You know you never know it could be one of my own down in dire straits like that,” said Fagan.

Yet, they work through their own aches and pains sharing not only meals but compassion.

“They even tell us if it wasn’t for you people, we don’t know what we would do,” said Desroches.

It keeps them both going.

“Right now everything is so expensive there is going to be more and more of those people,” said Fagan.

She and Deroches plan to continue serving meals for as long as they are able and people are in need.