Our Projects
Serving Our Community with Compassion
- One Project at a Time -
At Church Out Serving, we believe faith takes root in action. Each of our projects responds to a real, local need. Whether it’s offering a warm meal, a safe place to sleep, or a garden that grows hope one vegetable at a time, these initiatives are how we love our neighbours not just in word, but in deed. We invite you to explore the work being done—and to consider where your own hands or heart might join in.
First Serving Dinners
First Serving is a free community dinner that is served at lunchtime, on Mondays and Fridays between 11am and 12noon, from First Baptist Church’s kitchen in downtown Simcoe. Eat-in or take-out service is available. This program provides food and friendship to neighbours living with the struggles of financial or social poverty.
Community Christmas Dinner
On Christmas Day each year, we offer a hearty Christmas Dinner “with all the fixings” to anyone who needs a meal or a place to be. With carols, a visit by Santa, and gifts of an ornament and more, this event has become a cherished way for people to celebrate “the most wonderful time of the year.”
The Ice Box
The Ice Box offers hearty home-style frozen meals to neighbours who are unable to cook for themselves due to health and mobility concerns, age, homelessness, or other life crisis, coupled with financial need. Meals are delivered directly to clients’ homes. Note that all requests must come through a referring agency.
The Gathering Food Gardens
The Gathering Food Gardens is our community garden initiative, with produce grown specifically for neighbours who have limited access to fresh, healthy food. The harvests supply local meal programs, teaching kitchens, and food banks.
28 raised garden beds are located at 7 sites: Indwell-Hambleton Hall, Unilever-Simcoe, Evergreen Church, Colborne Village Church, Calvary Church, Townsend Community Church, and Riversyde 83. Each year, over 20,000 servings of 24 varieties of vegetables and herbs are grown pesticide-free and watered by drip irrigation.
Thanks to Scotts Canada, RONA Simcoe and Gintec Shade Technologies for their community spirit and generous support of our gardens.
Donation Station
Donation Station is our home basics service. Gently-used furniture, appliances, kitchen essentials, and children/baby items are repurposed and shared with individuals and families experiencing disability, abuse, addiction, unemployment, health or other life struggle.
Items we collect to share include beds, bedding, fridges, couches, lamps, tables, chairs, fridges, stoves, washers, dryers, microwaves, televisions, dishes, cutlery, pots and pans, toaster ovens, toasters, kettles, blenders, linens, fans, cribs, strollers, high chairs, and kids clothing.
To request items, care workers at local social agencies are invited to refer their clients by emailing a completed “Wish List” form for household items, or a “Children’s Wish List” for children’s needs. Note that all requests must come through a referring agency.
To offer items, donors are invited to contact the Church Out Serving office by email or telephone. Note that all items must be gently-used, clean, from smoke-free and pet-free homes, and in good working condition.
Home For The Night
Home For The Night offers our most vulnerable neighbours a safe place to sleep. Our year-round shelter is located downtown at the corner of Young and Talbot Streets in a cozy space within First Baptist Church, and is open every night.
Staff, volunteers and security care for our guests, who may arrive between 8-11pm. Comfortable quality beds, hearty meals, shower facilities, clothes, activities and a listening ear are offered.
This project has been made possible with the help of our caring community, specifically for our citizens who find themselves unhoused and in crisis.
Riversyde 83
Riversyde 83 is Norfolk’s exciting new foodhub extraordinaire, complete with a community teaching kitchen to explore, a cafe eatery to experience, a foods marketplace to frequent, rental rooms to celebrate or “do business,” and a chef’s kitchen behind it all.
Located in downtown Simcoe at 83 Sydenham Street just besyde the Lynn River, this purposely themed space celebrates our county’s rural roots with unexpected flair.
Riversyde 83’s mission is to create community, to promote wellness (mind, body and spirit), and to offer a pay-it-forward social enterprise that supports our other Church Out Serving programs.
Riversyde 83 – a gathering place where food, friends, and well-being converge.
“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.”
– George Bernard Shaw