Every Thursday morning rows of wooden tables, beams of window light and vibrant artwork surround volunteers Lisa Landgraf and Leanne Golinvaux. On one side of them are stacks of freshly made casseroles, on the other a rapidly growing line.
For five years Landgraf and Golinvaux have been the face of Convivium Urban Farmstead’s Community Casserole program, an initiative to feed the community with free casseroles made by volunteers.
“We’re the lucky ones, because we get to see the people who get to receive them,” Golinvaux said. “Everybody else, their dedication is just because they love the program.”
Convivium Urban Farmstead is a nonprofit on Dubuque’s North End that works to improve people’s lives through food.
“We call it the casserole church,” Landgraf said.
Standing in line with his brother, Wayne Hawes said they both have disabilities that restrict their ability to work. The program has helped the pair for nearly two years.
“You only get so much to live on,” Hawes said. “These resources for us … they just really help.”
The casserole program started in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the farmstead to close. Produce was still growing, and after a few months of lockdown, the organization had about 5,000 pounds of food that would soon go to waste.
Leslie Shalabi, co-founder of the farmstead, said growing food insecurity in the community sparked the charitable idea.
More than 40,000 casseroles later, people begin lining up hours before the casseroles are handed out.
“We started making 100 casseroles a week, and we gave them away,” she said. “These casseroles are for anybody who wants a meal.”
The program caught on fast. Now, they make 250 casseroles a week with a dozen home delivery routes. More than 70 volunteer hours a week keep the operation running, Shalabi said.
The process starts in the kitchen where a group of women, known as the “slicers and dicers” begin chopping up produce and cooking meat before it’s sent to an assembly crew. Within 24 hours it ends up on Landgraf and Golinvaux’s table.
Shalabi said they’ve always had a backlog of volunteers but funding is an ongoing battle. Each casserole costs about $10, meaning the nonprofit spends about $2,500 a week for the program.
“Funding has been a little bit more challenging, particularly this year,” she said. “We’ve applied for certain grants, and we’re hopeful that we’ll get them.”
In 2020, the city helped fund the program, but it has since moved to grants that are more restricted under state and federal funding cuts, she said.
Ultimately, Shalabi said the program’s goal is to create a community of support for people who would not have it otherwise.
“The unique kind of outcome of this is that we’re creating a community, which is our whole goal as an organization,” she said.