The Breakfast Club at Antioch AME

Every Sunday for eleven years, members of Antioch AME Church in Springfield, Illinois, arrived early to sing, pray, and study scripture. They tithed faithfully. They fasted during Lent. But the church sat three blocks from the Helping Hands shelter, and not once had anyone walked those three blocks with so much as a cup of coffee.

Then in 2019, a new deacon named Gloria Watkins asked a simple question at a board meeting: "What if our fasting actually cost us something besides lunch?"

The next Saturday, Gloria and four volunteers showed up at Helping Hands at 6 a.m. with cast-iron skillets, five dozen eggs, and a bag of onions. They cooked breakfast for forty-three people. Gloria sat down across from a man named Derek, who hadn't had a hot meal prepared by someone who looked him in the eye in over two years. He wept into his grits.

Within six months, the Breakfast Club grew to twenty-two regular volunteers. They helped residents draft resumes, drove them to job interviews, co-signed apartment applications. Three families found permanent housing that year.