Saint Matthias Episcopal Church - Soup Hour

The St. Matthias Soup Hour started in 1984 as a response to seeing hungry people in the Uptown area of Whittier. But this program was not the first such effort by St. Matthias. There are newspaper articles from early in the 1900's describing people from St. Matthias taking food to the railroad tracks to serve to the hobos coming through town on cross country trains. We take our heritage as a place that helps the least fortunate as a gift from God, a gift we hope to continue to faithfully fulfill in the future. Every weekday from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM we serve a hot meal to anyone who wishes to eat. Some guests are long time residents of the streets. Some are only recently homeless. Others live in nearby low income housing. There are also families, elders, and people who have jobs but do not make enough money to feed themselves the entire month. So at the end of the month we have more guests, but overall we average around 70 people served a day, through the work of about eight volunteers per day.