Four hours to cook, twenty minutes to serve. Every Saturday a rented courtyard in Addis Ababa becomes a dining room.
The service began with one pot and a handful of volunteers who knew, by name, the elders sleeping near the church wall. It has kept the same shape since: cook nearby, serve in person, sit down with people rather than handing food through a gate.
Volunteers arrive at six. Injera is collected from two bakeries that hold back part of the morning batch. The stew is made on site so that it is still hot when the first plates go out, and the cooking pots are carried between the tables rather than kept behind a counter.
Dignity is a practical matter here. People are served, not queued. Plates are filled to the same level for everyone. Nobody is asked to explain why they came.
“We do not ask who deserves a meal. We ask who has not eaten.”
The programme is small and deliberately repeatable. Its cost is dominated by food, which means additional support translates directly into additional plates rather than into overhead.
Attendance is recorded each week so that the foundation can see who stops coming and follow up. Several of the elders have since been connected to health screening through the healthcare programme.