From Kate Howard and Miss Elle Cree, Co-Directors of Stone Soup Crew
Every Wednesday night, more than 200 folx come through our tables at Cal Anderson Park.
Some come for dinner. Some need clothes, hygiene supplies, wound care, a tent, a sleeping bag, or a clean pair of socks. Some need help finding a resource or navigating a system. Some just stop to talk for a while.
Many are transgender. Many are refugees. Many are both.
Some have left places where being themselves put them at risk. Some are navigating homelessness, displacement, family estrangement, violence, immigration systems, discrimination, or the overwhelming practical work of starting over with little more than what they can carry.
And when you show up in the same place every Wednesday, people stop being strangers.
We learn names and stories. We worry about people, laugh with them, look forward to seeing them, and notice when someone who is usually there is not.
Some of our unhoused neighbors have told us Wednesday night’s dinner will be the only complete meal they eat that week.
So we make food. We make a lot of food.
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Every week, we make a 22-quart pot of soup, a vegan dish, 60 pounds of mac and cheese, and more than 100 hand-frosted cupcakes. We bring hot water for ramen, oatmeal, coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, along with cold drinks and bottled water.
Feeding more than 200 people costs between $400 and $800 every week, and we still run out of food.
And that’s just the food.
Our tables also hold clothing, hygiene and menstrual supplies, wound care, harm-reduction kits, socks, blankets, sleeping bags, tents, and other essentials.
But Stone Soup Crew isn’t just what happens at a row of tables for two hours on Wednesday night.
Kate Howard founded Stone Soup Crew around a simple idea: care should be personal. Knowing who is sitting at the table matters. So does remembering what they needed, what they told us last week, and what happened after they walked away.
Our co-director, Miss Elle Cree, fled Arkansas to begin again. Here, she has found an adopted family of daughters and sons, siblings, aunties, uncles, elders, and chosen family. She shows up for them with love, understanding, and a fierce commitment to keeping them safe.
Kate and Miss Elle came to this work from different places, but share the same conviction: people aren’t problems to process. They’re people worth knowing, worth remembering, and worth showing up for.
That shapes how Stone Soup Crew shows up.
It has become especially important for the trans refugees and newcomers who have found their way to us. Arriving in Seattle isn’t the end of their story. A program, temporary housing, or a first job can be a beginning, but people still need support when the first plan doesn’t work.
Stone Soup Crew picks up where other organizations drop off.
Not because we can replace every service. We can’t. But people can’t put hunger, shelter, safety, or survival on hold for an appointment, an intake process, missing paperwork, or an opening in a program.
Someone loses a job, and we help figure out what comes next. Housing falls through, and we start looking for options. Sometimes our phones ring in the middle of the night because someone needs somewhere safe to sleep.
We answer.
We make calls. We find resources. We give rides. We advocate. We troubleshoot. We listen. Sometimes we spend hours trying to solve a problem that doesn’t fit neatly into anyone’s program.
That’s the part of Stone Soup Crew you don’t see when you walk past our tables on Wednesday night.
There’s a place at our table for everyone.
This August, Stone Soup Crew turned one.
What began with people seeing a need and responding to it now brings more than 200 folx to our tables every Wednesday. The scale has changed. The idea hasn’t.
People need people.
So on Saturday, September 26, from 2-5 PM at Cal Anderson Park, we’re celebrating our first year the same way we’ve spent it: bringing people together.
Our One-Year Anniversary & Mutual Aid Fair will bring together community organizations and resources, food, clothing and supplies, music, a silent auction, and people who have something to offer or something they need.
Come for either reason. Come for both. Come meet your neighbors.
If your organization would like to table, you’d like to contribute an item, service, gift card, or experience to the silent auction, or you simply want to be part of the day, find us at TheStoneSoupCrew.com.
See a need. Fill a need. Keep making room at the table.
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