CHiPS: Christian Help in Park Slope

I have been a volunteer at CHIPS for a couple of years now. It’s a great place to volunteer, and a worthy cause to donate money to. All you have to do is look at the faces of the people who come in to eat. Some look like you or I, but they have fallen on hard times and need CHIPS to get through the week financially. With others, it’s very clear they have suffered terrible things in their lives, and CHIPS is a refuge for them, once a day, every day. The food is good, the coffee is hot, and the thought and effort that goes into planning menus, food preparation, and welcoming the «clients» into the warm and friendly surroundings of the dining room is as close to being home as many of them get. When I started volunteering there, it was just a place to volunteer — a place to fill my time as a retiree. Now it’s a mission and a passion. I recommend it to anyone who is seeking meaningful volunteer work, or someplace worthy to give money to. They really need it at this time.

I first heard about CHiPS from our church. I learned that it is an interfaith charity that has been around for over forty years, serving the Park Slop community when the area was a very different kind of place. I started volunteering there almost a year ago and have become thoroughly impressed by how much it does and how well it does this despite its small size and relatively limited resources. Supported primarily by donations from the local community and the efforts of dedicated volunteers, it provides 93,000 freshly prepared meals a year to homeless men and women. It welcomes everyone and never asks for IDs or papers. And it shelters nine homeless young mothers and their infants in small apartments upstairs. These young women stay a year. During that time, they get counseling, acquire parenting skills, and learn how to become independent.
CHiPS welcomes volunteers of all skills and ages — it has teens, retirees, and lots of people in between. People who enjoy cooking help prepare home cooked meals daily from donated foodstuffs — a creative and challenging task since they never know what will show up that day. Some volunteers help set out the food and serve it to the guests, some help out with the moms and their babies, while others work in administration, managing the database, work with creative — writing, design, graphics — and communications. I helped with fundraising and the development of communication materials.
What I love about CHiPS is the immediacy of the results. You see the benefits of your work very quickly, whether in gratitude of those eating the food or the faces of the moms you helped. It’s a lean organization, nothing is wasted. Being a small charity, it welcomes new ideas and you have freedom to try new things. There is a lot of camaraderie among the volunteers, especially the kitchen teams, some of whom have worked together for many years. The Executive Director, Denise, is a great listener and great to work with.
Even better, it’s two blocks from the R train’s Union Street station so it’s really easy to get to.

CHIPS is a non-​profit organization. I have volunteered here several times and it is now my charity of choice. They are dedicated to helping the less fortunate. It is also known as Park Slope Christian Help. They serve over 70,000 meals annually and give temporary shelter to more than 2,000 people each year. CHIPS needs your help, donate time, money, food or clothes so they can continue helping others. They are open approximately 360 days a year! Who else can say that in business today?