Grate Patrol is a mission unique to St. Paul’s Parish that has provided uninterrupted weekend breakfast distribution to the homeless for 26 years. Volunteers prepare and distribute breakfast bags and hot coffee to 400 people each Saturday and Sunday, 52 weeks per year. The area served is Foggy Bottom between Georgetown and the Canadian Embassy near the National Gallery of Art. In cold weather, many of the people whom we serve sleep outside on heating grates, hence the name of the program.

 

Grate Patrol begain in late 1981, when there was as yet no Miriam’s Kitchen, no Georgetown Ministry Center, no Salvation Army Grate Patrol, and no Fannie Mae Help for the Homeless Walkathon. All these now-familiar programs lay in the future. On Christ the King Sunday, November 22, Saint Paul’s energetic and popular curate, Father Robert F. Waggener, galvanized the parish with a powerful sermon based on the Gospel from Matthew 25, “Lord, when did we see Thee hungry?” The sermon resulted in a well-attended and enthusiastic meeting that established the Grate Patrol as a formal, recognized element of St. Paul’s Hunger Committee. With sixteen parishioners each committing themselves for service one night a week and several others acting as substitutes, the Committee began a well-staffed patrol in early December, bringing hot soup or stew to people on the Virginia Avenue grates. At the same time two parishioners who faithfully attended the daily 7:00 am Mass started a morning patrol. Every day throughout the winter before coming to Mass, they took breakfasts of tea, bread, and fruit to people of the street. Read more about the history of Grate Patrol in the June 2009 issue of The Epistle.

 

Grate Patrol needs volunteers in three areas:

 

Contact Tina Mallett with overall issues or questions (202-965-9324 or tmallett@si.edu).

 

See below for resources for Grate Patrol volunteers.