Community Partner Reopening Provides Crucial Services

A guest enjoys her meal at the newly reopened Augusta Dream Center Diner. The Center’s reopening means it can provide in-person dining again, as well as crucial wraparound services like its clothes closet.

At 5 p.m., Marlin straightens the tabletop menu and a bottle of hand sanitizer, then he walks to the Augusta Dream Center’s front door to begin letting in guests. It’s time for Sunday dinner.

In the gym, 10 tables are set up with 4 places each so that guests can practice social distancing. Plates of food, drinks and condiments will be rolled over to tables as families sit down. On tonight’s menu: chicken casserole, green beans, pound cake and sweet tea.

It’s the first time since July that the Dream Center has been able to offer a sit-down meal, though it has continued to provide to-go meals on Sunday evenings. Fewer people have been coming for the food ministry, which provided more than 3,000 meals last year to families experiencing food insecurity.

“Before the pandemic, we would see 50 to 70 people but now it’s 20 to 30 or sometimes in the 40s,” say Marlin, who is the Diner Team Director.

This Sunday is a bigger crowd; 38 people are here to eat and take a turn in the

Masters Tournament moon pies bring smiles at the Augusta Dream Center.

Dream Center’s free clothes closet. Everyone – guests and volunteers – seems happy to get back to a sense of normalcy around the Sunday dinners. From 6 feet away, volunteers catch up with guests they haven’t seen recently, and you can see smiles starting behind masks.

Marlin is pleased with the turnout. He hopes that as more and more people learn about the return to sit-down dinners that more guests will return.

“I want this place to be like a haven of peace, with everything that’s going on – the chaos of the pandemic,” he says.

The Center’s reopening also means it can provide crucial wrap-around services again, like its clothes closet. More than that, it can again provide a place for fellowship and community for guests during this time of hardship and isolation.

Marlin sums up this need: “Of course we want to feed and clothe them, but I also want them to know they are treated with honor and dignity.”