Cooking with Purpose: Volunteer Wave and The Dugout Return to Soup-Making

After many months of teamwork, The Dugout and our Volunteer Wave community are finally able to make nutritious soup for the individuals who drop by The Dugout—a safe “living room” space in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The Dugout provides a welcoming environment for community members experiencing homelessness, including those staying in nearby shelters. Visitors can stop in for coffee, water, snacks, washroom access, and a place to rest and watch TV.

Earlier this year, The Dugout relocated from its long-time Gastown home to a temporary space at 57 East Hastings. The new location brought several benefits: washrooms, a dedicated activity room, storage, and a multipurpose space. But, it also came with one major challenge: no usable kitchen. Without a kitchen, The Dugout was unable to prepare hearty meals like soup, a comforting staple they previously served daily.

To help fill this gap, the Volunteer Wave community, alongside some dedicated long-time volunteers from The Dugout, began donating 200 sandwiches at a time to ensure guests had access to more filling meal options. Meanwhile, Sharon, The Dugout’s Volunteer Coordinator and Board Director, worked tirelessly to find an external kitchen that could serve as a long-term solution. After an extensive search, she secured kitchen access through Watari Counselling and Social Services, who generously offered to share their community kitchen space. The Dugout, Volunteer Wave, and three other DTES food-based charities would now be able to rotate through the kitchen to prepare meals for their communities.

On November 22, 2025, the Volunteer Wave community arrived ready to help launch this new chapter of soup-making. Each soup day starts with picking up food donations from The Dugout and delivering them to the Watari kitchen. This time, we received an abundance of onions, potatoes, and tomatoes, plus additional vegetables like bell peppers, asparagus, and broccoli. Using these ingredients, volunteers set out to make a hearty sausage and roasted vegetable soup.

Inside the lively commercial kitchen, volunteers washed, chopped, steamed, and roasted vegetables, and even prepped extra produce to freeze for future soup-making days. As always, the kitchen was filled with music, teamwork, and good conversation. A wonderful bonus was sharing the space with volunteers from other local organizations, which offered opportunities to learn about other local missions and explore future collaborations.

Once all the ingredients were fully prepared, we packed up the soup components and brought everything back to The Dugout for future serving. It was a fulfilling day of connection, delicious smells, and meaningful impact. We’re extremely grateful to everyone who lent a hand. Thank you to all the volunteers who joined us for our first soup-making session in the Watari kitchen!

If you’re interested in joining the Volunteer Wave community for upcoming soup-making shifts, sign up on Bloomerang under “The Dugout” opportunity. More shifts are on the way, and we can’t wait to be back in the kitchen together.