On a chilly San Francisco summer evening, families slowly trickle into Safe & Sound’s Waller Street location, most coming directly from school or work. They are arriving to collect a freshly cooked dinner to take home for their family so that they can enjoy an evening free from the stresses of meal preparation.
Safe & Sound’s weekly community dinner started as an in-person event, but after transitioning to a take-away model during the height of COVID-19 restrictions, families shared how much they appreciated the ease and comfort of a ready meal they could enjoy together at home, and so a new tradition was born. It’s a simple but powerful illustration of how responsive programming, guided by community voice, can evolve into lasting change.
Each week, volunteers come forward, individually or in groups, to shop for ingredients and make nutritious meals either in their kitchen or ours. Up to 150 members of partner families involved with Safe & Sound’s supportive programming visit our Waller and Bayview offices each Monday for pre-packaged meals intended to be taken home and enjoyed together. In 2024, Safe & Sound served over 3,700 meals, the majority of which were through this program.
The family dinner is just one example of the concrete supports offered to Safe & Sound families which also include diapers, clothes, bus tokens, and other items intended to support parents raising children in and around San Francisco. This program reflects Safe & Sound’s focus on strengthening the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s five Protective Factors in the families it works with which, in addition to concrete support in times of need, also include: parental resilience, social connections, knowledge of parenting and child development, and social and emotional competence of children. These factors have been shown to make positive outcomes more likely for young children and their families, and to reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. You can read more about the five Protective Factors in this recent blog.
The Community Dinner program could always benefit from more volunteers, if you are interested to find out more about how you can contribute contact our Volunteer & Community Engagement Manager at chris.miller@safeandsound.org or (415) 213-7416, or visit our volunteering page.