Serving Stories

Serving SHORT Stories!

On this page, you will find links to all our mini-episodes we call Serving SHORT Stories!

Serving SHORT Stories 13: Moving the Needle

May 23, 2025: In these two little stories about creating beauty in the surroundings of people in need, Carlton Deal, the founder of Serve the City, emphasizes how simple projects can move the needle in people’s lives… and help them perhaps to see their own beauty.

Serving SHORT Stories 12: From Privilege to Purpose

May 8, 2025: Giving time to volunteering can change the course of your life! That’s what happened to Nicolo Sgreva, the representative for the UPS Foundation in Europe. In this story, Nicolo tells us how volunteering around the world led him into his present job, and how he sees volunteering benefiting his UPS colleagues.

Serving SHORT Stories 11: A Celebration of Dignity

April 24, 2025: This heartwarming story comes from our very first podcast episode, set at a Community Dinner in Lisbon in April 2019. A young volunteer came up with a creative way to support the Community Dinners, that also caused people often treated as worthless to see the dignity in themselves.

Serving SHORT Stories 10: Giving Back to Move Forward

April 10, 2025: Early on, Serve the City had to learn the lesson that people in need were also people with something to give! Shannon Deal, the producer of Serving Stories, tells how a group of Afghan migrants in Brussels helped teach us the valuable lesson that volunteering is for everyone—no matter their situation.

Serving SHORT Stories 9: The Kindness of Strangers

March 27, 2025: Ronan Coffey, the National Director of Serve the City Ireland (pictured at far right), recounts to us how sometimes strangers can help a stuck person when family can’t. In this picture, he is with a group of volunteers who did a decluttering project in a hoarder house, similar to the one in this story.

If you want to hear a full-length episode in which Ronan tells us about STC Dublin’s decluttering work, listen to: Sparking Hope for a New Start.

Serving SHORT Stories 8: De-Junking Your Heart

March 13, 2025: Melinda Means of STC Berlin recounts a heartwarming story from the very beginning of her experience with Serve the City, at our Serving Stories Live event. This story shows that no matter how much we think we are giving others through serving, we always gain much more. (Melinda is pictured at right, with Berlin City Leader Christine Thumm.)

If you want to hear another episode featuring Melinda, listen to Humility: Mopping Mayors and Stumbling Stones.

Serving SHORT Stories 7: When Your Doorbell Rings

February 27, 2025: In this episode, we hear touching story from Rev. Annie Bolger, a chaplain a Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Brussels. Holy Trinity hosts the Community Kitchen, a close partner of Serve the City there. Annie tells us how the church has changed through opening its doors… and encourages us to do the same.

If you want to hear the previous episode also featuring Annie, listen to: Partnerships: Activists, Assemble!

Serving SHORT Stories 6: These Mugs are Green

February 13, 2025: Andre Mar and Austin Silva Mota, from Serve the City Lisbon, told us this story at our last Serving Stories Live event. It happened during Covid with a group of people in a homeless shelter who had joined a learning community called “Academy of Change.” One of the volunteers presented issues concerning the environment, and men responded by changing their own environment…

Below are some photos of another outcome of the workshops led by Andre—a brand called “Somos Pessoas” (“We are People”). The translation of the first picture is: We are people… experiencing social exclusion whose goal is to use their abilites to impact society and the local community.

Hear more from Austin Silva Mota about this group and the environment on: Friendly Neighbourhood Heroes.

Serving SHORT Stories 5: The Three Little Bigs

January 30, 2025: In this episode, we hear three mini-stories from Christine Thumm, leader of STC Berlin (pictured at right) that all took place in the the same elderly home. And we learn how three small acts of service had a really BIG impact!

If you want to hear another episode about serving in this same elderly home in Berlin, check out Generosity: What You Can See Out Wenceslas’ Window.

Serving SHORT Stories 4: A Shoebox Full of Love

December 12, 2024: This short story was told to us by Carlton Deal, Serve the City founder. At right, you can see some volunteers from the Brussels Christmas Shoebox project in his story delivering gifts to local charities.

Serving SHORT Stories 3: Sharing Kindness, One Stone at a Time

November 28, 2024: Above you can see Kindness Stones made by STC Gold Coast (Australia) Core Team member, Shan Berserik (front and reverse). In this short story, Shan told us how she makes these stones at the gathering sessions for Serve the City Community Days, and also gives the opportunity for other volunteers to craft them if they want, using paint pens. Check out her two little stories of how these stones had an impact on both recipients and those who made them!

If you want to hear another episode about Serve the City Gold Coast, listen to “Just Keep On Going!”

Serving SHORT Stories 2: Just Start With a Card

November 14, 2024: This story of hope, called “Just Start With a Card,” was shared by Ingeborg Dijkstra from STC Maastricht, at our Serving Stories Live event in 2023. Ingeborg is in the middle of the photo… serving (as always).

If you want to hear another episode about kindness in Maastricht, check out “Hope: Making Connections in Maastricht.“

Serving Short Story 1: All We Have Because We Did NOT Have the Gym

October 28, 2024: Our first mini-episode features a story about the very first Serve the City event in Brussels in 2005, told by STC founder and CEO, Carlton Deal. Here he is, at the 2008 Big Vounteer Week with his wife (and Serving Stories producer) Shannon Deal.

Serve Like a Superhero: Episode 12

“We have awesome powers, my X-Men. It is our birthright… And, perhaps, our burden. But, with that power comes responsibility — and also accountability.” This is what Professor Xavier told his X-Men as they united to use their mutant powers for good—and in spite of being widely feared.

Large corporations are often also widely feared. We recognize that they—like the X-Men—have powers that could be used to the detriment of others. These other might be their own employees or people in the communities where they are based. But many companies today seek to exercise accountability for this power through Corporate Social Responsibility. And Serve the City seeks to give them a diversity of options to be united in this goal!

In this episode, we explore the very fruitful partnership between STC and UPS, the world’s largest transportation company! Just as the X-Men use their varied abilities together to accomplish the greatest good, so these two remarkable organizations, united, are making a huge difference as UPS employees are mobilized as volunteers and as UPS uses their logistical skills to enhance impact! (And there was so much to tell, that this is just Part 1…)

Listen to this episode here:

We started our episode in the dining room of the UPS Brussels Administrative Office. The tables were set with all the implements needed for 15 people to make delicious fruit salads!

On this day, UPS employees took an hour from their morning to make fruit salads for the Red Cross Centre. These fruit salads would be served as an appreciated “extra” alongside the regular meals provided there for people on the streets, migrants and refugees.

Wiktoria and Alice, STC Brussels employees, came along to facilitate the project. Here, Wiktoria introduces the project and Serve the City’s goals to the UPS volunteers (while Shannon Deal from Serving Stories records).

And this is Andrea Petersen, the UPS leader of today’s project! Andrea is both a long-term UPSer, and a long-term Serve the City project leader, and acts as a liaison to unite the two locally. (We will see more from her below.)

Looks like the employees are working hard on their volunteer project!

UPS is a global partner of Serve the City, as the two unite to serve the communities where they co-exist. In many cities in Europe and the Middle East, STC provides volunteering opportunities for UPS workers, and UPS helps facilitate the STC projects with their logistics expertise.

Below, Serve the City Emirates serves an Easter Community Dinner for migrant workers in Dubai. Karan Fatas, the leader of STC Emirates, told us that it has become a yearly tradition for UPS workers to be involved in serving this dinner.

But that’s not all! About 15 children of UPS workers also volunteered, arranging the seating for the guests! Each child received a certificate for their participation. (Karen Fatas is in the centre, with long hair.)

(You can hear more about what Serve the City Emirates is doing with migrant workers in Dubai in this episode: Courage: Dreaming New Dreams in the Big City.)

We also heard a story from Serve the City Hannover, in Germany, about how UPS came to the rescue! The City Leader, Stefan Rose, told us how another corporate partner, a large hotel, donated 300 sets of bedding for STC to distribute to women’s shelters. The catch was that the bedding needed to be out within a week… and UPS used their logistics skills to move all the donations to a safe place.

The cooperation between UPS and STC began in Brussels with one UPS employee. Third from left is Anne Coppens, who worked with HR in UPS starting around 2011. She had already been a Serve the City volunteer for a number of years. When she started at UPS and was told she was in charge of volunteering at her site, she saw that the diversity of projects offered by Serve the City would be a draw for more UPSers to get involved. The picture above is from a Christmas Eve Party for people in need with the Salvation Army, one of the project partners of Serve the City.

One of the people Anne Coppens recruited to serve was Andrea Petersen, shown here at her very first Serve the City project! Note the “United As One”shirt worn by Andrea, just as in the UPS photos above! The project was cleaning up a community centre that served underprivileged kids in a tough area of town. Even though this was not her favorite way of serving, Andrea kept coming back until she found her serving niche.

Andrea told us that one of the reasons that she came back was that the project leader, Osama (centre of photo) made sweeping the floor so fun for her daughter that she brought with her. Andrea continued to come back and continued to bring her kids. Now she is not only the liaison for the local UPS office, but a long-term STC project leader herself.

Eventually, Andrea (in corner of top left picture) found her volunteering sweet spot in a project serving homeless people living on the streets. These pictures are from a project back in 2019.

She continued to do this with her kids, and other kids, and loves to see the smiles on the faces of people who receive this kindness… like the little girl with the doll above! We will be bringing you a story about Andrea’s project currently next month!

In 2024, Andrea was awarded the James Casey Award for Community Service by UPS for the Europe/Middle East Region. This award, named after the UPS founder is the highest award that can be given to a UPS employee. And the Brussels STC team was there to cheer her on as she received it!

UPS is a remarkable company when it comes to community service, continuing to follow in their founder’s footsteps. If you wish to know more about Jim Casey and the values-based company he founded, you might want to read this article.

Redux, Episode 11

This week, we are re-issuing our very first episode— from a Community Dinner in Lisbon in 2019! Although some of the people running the dinner have changed since this episode aired, the Community Dinners continue to go strong, since their inauguration in 2011.

The Community Dinners are a flagship project of Serve the City Portugal and occur once or twice a month in every city where they are active. In these dinners, one group of volunteers cooks a three-course meal while another group welcomes guests from all kinds of marginalized groups: people experiencing homelessness, elderly people, disabled people, and more. Still another group of volunteers—usually from a corporation, a school or a church—sets up the tables and serves the meal. This group usually is the one funding the dinner for the evening. And finally, there is a group of volunteers who eat at the tables with the guests and facilitate conversation.

It is a most inspiring project and we hope you enjoy this re-issue! If you do, you might want to look back and go through some of our other old issues… And if you want to see some pictures of the recent Community Dinners, visit STC Lisbon’s Instagram page.

Listen to the episode here:

For more episodes featuring STC Lisbon, listen to: Friendly Neighbourhood Heroes and These Mugs are Green!

Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 10

Batman once said: “Our scars can destroy us, even after the physical wounds have healed. But if we survive them, they can transform us. They can give us the power to endure, and the strength to fight.”

Batman knew what he was talking about, having transformed the trauma he endured as 10-year-old Bruce Wayne of seeing his parents murdered in front of him. In becoming Batman, he took that suffering and shaped it into a motivation to bring justice to his city.

Asylum seekers, one of the main groups of people Serve the City supports around the world, have by definition suffered trauma in their home countries—and they may continue to suffer in their journey toward safety and assure status. But we believe that as we build relationships with refugees—not out of pity but recognizing they also have something to give—we can invite them into our community as volunteers, allowing them to transform that suffering into successful serving.

In this episode, we visit STC Cork in Ireland, on the very first project of their city relaunch! There, in an accommodation centre for asylum seekers, volunteers begin the process of befriending residents, while inviting them to share their talents in cooking food from their home cultures. We also meet Abdul and Safi, two Serve the City employees who also happen to be refugees! They share how serving has transformed them, and is transforming other refugees around them.

Listen to this episode here:

We were privileged to be at the very first project initiated by STC Cork in Ireland this November! Pictured here are City Leaders Ernie and Brandon Treu (in the gray STC sweatshirts). From the right are Ronan Coffey (STC Ireland director), Shannon Deal (Serving Stories producer) and Leontine Mastenbroek (Ronan’s wife and longtime STCI board member).

And in the middle of the picture is a surprise guest at the project: Cork’s Deputy Lord Mayor, Honore Kamegni! This was particularly significant because the project took place at an accommodation centre for asylum seekers… and Counsellor Kamegni first came to Ireland as an asylum seeker himself, 22 years ago. Now he is the first person of colour to serve on Cork City Council. It was a great honor for Serve the City Cork to be recognized by this man who has transformed his own suffering from persecution in Cameroon into service for his adopted country of Ireland.

(Unfortunately, our audio of this visit did not turn out well, so we did not include it in the episode… but we wanted to include it here!)

Brandon and Ernie Treu, the Cork City Leaders, are experienced children/youth workers, and they had planned all sorts of games and fun activities for the children at the centre. Their teenage kids, Silas and Ethan, accompanied them as volunteers on the project. Brandon is also a professional puppeteer, and in his alternate persona as “Andy,” he and Ernie helped kids think about what it means to be a friend. This was the theme of the evening, as volunteers and residents got to know one another and began to make friends.

Below is a little taste of “Andy” and Ernie’s presentation about being friends!

We do not have any photos of the residents, as the centre’s rules prohibited us from taking any pictures of them (even from the back). So you will have to just imagine the crowd, and the smells of delicious food the residents made to share—food representing the countries they came from! Inviting residents to share their food was a good way to start out by recognizing that they also have something to share! Transformation takes place as people are given the opportunity to give!

Meet Abdul Assaad, a Syrian refugee who now works for Serve the City Luxembourg. We talked to Abdul at the European Forum and found out that he found STC because he was looking for a way to give back to his new country. Abdul talked to us about how he has seen love build bridges that cross dividing lines.

Here you can see Abdul leading two STC Luxembourg projects transforming lives in the city: working with children at a refugee centre and street kindness to people living homeless. These are just two of the projects that he mentioned he has partnered with; you can also hear about some of the environmental projects he has been part of in our episode called Environment: Gotta Clean Up This City!

Here is Abdul at the European Forum in Berlin with his City Leader Nicolas Duprey (at left) and Florent Brunet (middle), the STC Lux treasurer. Unfortunately, due to the current European political backlash against refugees and immigrants, the government program that helped support Abdul to work full-time for STC Luxembourg has ended since our interview with him. Nonetheless, he remains a team leader there and he is now spending more time studying to improve his facility with local languages. Let’s hope things change and people start to realize how much people like Abdul has to offer to society!

I believe that if I want to love this country and start to have it like a real home, I need to give back. We love who we give to. So I start to give first, and it’s not a secret that I start to love the country.
Abdul Assaad

Find out more about Serve the City Luxembourg HERE.

This is Safi Taha, pictured at our European Forum in Berlin. Safi is an Afghan refugee who now works for Serve the City Paris, seeking to create programs and partnerships that will transform the lives of other asylum seekers and refugees. We first met Safi a year ago when he told us his story in “Compassion: Nourishing Change through Kindness.”

Two ways Safi seeks to transform the lives of asylum seekers are: 1) inviting them to join a weekly Language and Culture Exchange hosted by Serve the City Paris (at left), and 2) inviting them to become a regular part of the STC volunteer community by joining a food outreach project (right). After three months of regular attendance at these programs, asylum seekers are given a recommendation letter that can help with their appeal… and Safi says that 90% of the guys who complete the program are granted refugee status!

But that is not all… many of the guys continue to join in the projects because they now feel they belong to a new community in France. Safi here represents STC Paris at the Town Hall at an event concerning the city’s winter plan for people on the streets. Safi’s own life was transformed through volunteering, and he works hard to transform the lives of others like himself!

Disadvantaged people, they think maybe they think that they don’t have money, so they have no value in the society. But when they come to volunteer, they feel they have value in the society. They have the ability, they find their capacity, and unconsciously they become happy when they feel that they did something nice that day.
Safi Taha

See more about Serve the City Paris HERE.

Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 9

“This looks like a job for Superman!” On the old TV show, whenever someone was stuck in an impossible situation—balanced on the edge of a collapsing building, or stuck under fallen rubble—this is what they would say! Superman himself, when asked why the world needed superheroes, said, “To catch them when they fall.”

This is what volunteers from Serve the City Ireland are doing as they offer a new start to people in difficulty through DIY and decluttering projects. Often, these are people who not only are struggling with some kind of disability or illness (physical or mental), but are also isolated and in a situation where their home environment has become unmanageable. As social workers and other key community players alert them to the situation, STC volunteers can come in and clean up gardens, do home repairs, or remove junk from their houses to give them a new start!

Listen to the episode here:

We went along with a Serve the City Dublin DIY team one Saturday morning in November, where they were giving a new start to a disabled man who goes by the name of Loxie (back left), by clearing out his garden. Leading the team was Dick Burke (front left) who has been heading DIY projects for the past 12 years and is also on the STC board. The rest of the team are Eugene and Michaela, both long-term STC volunteers, and Samir, who was volunteering for the first time!

Loxie, who used to be a bicycle courier before his disability, became a bit of an Internet sensation because of his dog, Zai. Zai first started climbing into his courier bag to go with him on his rounds… and then worked his way up to riding around on Loxie’s shoulder!

This picture is just one from Zai’s Instagram feed, which has over 25,000 followers! Follow the link for more cute photos.

These days, however, Loxie is suffering from a rare type of muscular dystrophy—a disease that is both debilitating and terminal. He was also alone, and did not have the help needed to “get on top of his garden” as he put it. This is job for Superman… I mean Serve the City!

The volunteers made short work of trimming the ivy and bushes, digging out weeds, and getting rid of clutter in the garden. Now Zai the dog has a place to run and play and Loxie has a new start with a more manageable garden! He also was a beneficiary of the goodie boxes that STC volunteers distributed at Christmas with personally signed cards… you can hear about this in our episode Generosity: What You Can See Out Wenceslas’ Window.

DIY projects on the outside of people’s houses eventually led to some clients allowing STC Dublin volunteers to declutter the insides of their houses. This photograph was taken by Ronan Coffey, STC Ireland director, and it captures some of the sense of despair that goes along with a long-term habit of hoarding. Without help, there is no way a person in this situation is going to be able to escape the trap they find themselves in. This is when volunteers can really help by offering a new start.

These pictures and the one above are from a house featured in a story told by Barry Enright at our Serving Stories Live event that led us to investigate STC Dublin’s work clearing out the houses of people suffering from hoarder syndrome. To do these projects, the team members wear hazmat suits, and Barry told us that they had to put special gel inside their masks to cover up the smell insidee.

This man living in this house was found by police after they broke down the door when his neighbour reported a lack of response to her knocking. He was very ill, and was sent to hospital, but when social services saw the state of the house, they refused to send him home. Eventually, social services called Serve the City Dublin to come help clear out the house so the man would be able to return from hospital. Volunteers filled four large skips—trash containers six metres long and two metres high—with the rubbish they took from the house.

Ronan and Barry told us that one of the commonalities for people in these situations are that they are isolated, not having family and friends or not allowing those they had into the house. Another commonality is often that there is some stressful situation that triggers the hoarding behavior, such as a death or divorce. It takes time for such a hoard to accumulate, often 20-40 years; thus, clearing it out gives the person a chance for a new start in a clean environment.

This video shows the work going on in the house as the team was clearing it out. This work would enable this man to make a new start from a new baseline when he returned from the hospital, with neighbours now to help him.

Below is the team that worked for two days on the house Barry told us about: Eugene and Dick, who were also on the DIY project above, and Barry and Ronan. Because of the hazards involved in this particular situation, all of these were experienced volunteers who had done these projects before.

We never know exactly what the final outcome is, but at least we hope that we have ignited some little spark, some way forward. They can then move on with their lives and see the difference and realize the impossible situation that they’ve been in, and that they’ve been shown a way. And that there are people who listen and care and can help.
Ronan Coffey, STC Ireland Director

This is a much-loved page from a Superman comic, in which he rescues a teenager who is about to jump to their death, not by swooping in and catching them, but by encouraging them. He says: “It’s never as bad as it seems. You’re much stronger than you think you are. Trust me.“

When we try to provide a new start for someone, this is the message that we want to share with then, as we help free them from a burden they have been carrying alone.

Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 8

“I never thought I would be able to do this stuff—but I can. Anyone can wear the mask.” This is what Miles Morales, a 16-year-old Spiderman, says in the movie Into the Spider-Verse. In it, the original Spiderman, Peter Parker, becomes his mentor not only for his abilities but also for his compassion toward others.

(You can view this part of the movie at the bottom of our post HERE. You too can wear the mask!)

We also find that volunteering offers an excellent milieu for mentoring others, as we find out in this week’s episode, centred on the Community Kitchen (a close partner of Serve the City Brussels). These mentees may be young people, as is the case with Aline. She is now the CK Operations Manager, but was formerly a teenage volunteer who did Serve the City projects with her youth group. Or they may be people in vulnerable situations, who find support as they engage in volunteering… and perhaps also find a new future waiting for them!

We also explore the risks and benefits of this kind of mentoring in discussion with Gayl Russell, the Community Kitchen founder, and Rev. Annie Bolger, chaplain at Holy Trinity Anglican Church where the Community Kitchen operates. You will be inspired in developing and mentoring your own volunteers as you listen!

Listen to the episode here:

Here we see staff from the Community Kitchen taking a well-earned break while out at the Brussels Christmas market together! In front is Aline, the first person we meet in this episode; on the left is Roya, another of our featured interviewees. Completing the group are Anjali and Akkara (who was in our last episode, Partnerships: Activists, Assemble! )

Aline’s journey to working in the social sector began when she was a teenager in a youth group led by Nathan Torrini, now the leader of Serve the City Belgium. Nathan involved the youth group in Serve the City Big Volunteer Days, and also the Big Volunteer Week in the summer. Aline recounted how she got involved in a community garden, painting a social centre, and distributing food on the streets. She also became a leader in the youth group, mentoring other young people into volunteering. She said:

“We tried to to encourage the young people in Brussels to discover that there are a lot of needs in Brussels. Not all the needs are far away from us. I mean, there are needs everywhere in a lot of countries, but also in our city there are a lot of people who just need a small helping hand.”

Later, Aline became an intern with Serve the City Brussels, working with her mentor Nathan. In the picture above, Aline (in green coat) is leading a food outreach project in Louvain-la-Neuve, a city just outside Brussels.

Gradually, Aline found she had a passion and a vocation for working in the social sector. She took a part-time job with Fedasil, the Belgian Federal government body that manages the process for asylum seekers. She started this job when the Ukraine war sent many Ukrainians all over Europe seeking asylum; now, she works primarily with unaccompanied minors, children and teenagers who have come to Belgium alone.

When Aline began looking for a second part-time job in the social sector, she learned through Serve the City of an opening at the Community Kitchen. Now she is Operations Manager at the Community Kitchen, coordinating the volunteers and employees so that they can meet the demands of the project for which they provide meals. And she in turn can impact volunteers that come by helping them understand how they can can offer “a small helping hand.”

We also talked to Roya, who came to Europe ten years ago from Iran. After spending two years in Greece and four years trying to get to England, she was finally caught by the police in Belgium and applied for asylum. However, her application was turned down, and she ended up on the streets for some time.

Eventually, she found help from Oasis, a Serve the City partner that works with people who have been trafficked or exploited, or who are vulnerable to exploitation. They were working with Serve the City in an initiative called “The Trampoline Project” which helped vulnerable women find a way back into employment, mentoring them through training and volunteering. And when they found out she had experience in cooking, they recommended that she volunteer with the Community Kitchen!

We did an episode about this last season, featuring a short interview with Roya! The episode is called, Courage: Dreaming New Dreams in the Big City

If you want to to learn more about Oasis Brussels, you can find more info HERE.

One of Roya’s big goals was to get out of her exploitative living situation into safe housing. The founder of the Community Kitchen, Gayl Russell, offered Roya to come and live in her house. This is taking mentoring to a whole new level! At the time of the interview, Roya had been living with Gayl almost three years. Gayl talked about how welcoming Roya into her home was not a simple decision, but also how it had helped her to grow as she also learned through mentoring and hosting Roya.

In this picture, Gayl and Roya pose with St. Nicholas, played by Mahmoud, another STC project leader who is also a Syrian refugee, in December 2023. They are celebrating because Roya had finally received her papers to live and work in Belgium! The Community Kitchen had testified to her diligent and dependable work as a chef, and she was finally recognized as a member of the Brussels community. And now she was an employee of the Community Kitchen too!

When we did the interview in November 2024, Roya had just signed a contract for her own apartment—a dream of hers for many years. Finally, after 10 years, she is able to start a new life—thanks to the mentoring and support that she received from Gayl and the Community Kitchen team!

And now, the promised movie clip from Into the Spider-Verse. You too can wear the mask!

Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 7

“Earth’s Mightiest Heroes!” This is how the superhero team of the Avengers is known. Each one of them—Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor and the Black Widow (shown at right), among others—has their own special powers and abilities. But in partnership with the others on the team, together they are unstoppable!

The same is true when Serve the City partners with local charities and social services to create projects that could not happen without the partnership. The non-profits and social services have access to the big issues in the city and the people affected by them; but Serve the City has the ability to mobilize volunteers that maximize the work the partners are doing.

In this episode, we see how Serve the City Brussels partners closely with the Community Kitchen, a non-profit that was started by an STC volunteer, Gayl Russell, in the kitchen of Holy Trinity Anglican Church. Together, the Community Kitchen now makes over 5000 meals a week that are distributed to hungry people by Serve the City volunteers in other project partner charities. And the Community Kitchen also benefits from Serve the City Brussels sending it hundreds of volunteers a week through its ServeNow app.

Listen to the episode here:

Gayl Russell is the founder of the Community Kitchen, which started just prior to COVID to help create food for various food outreach projects. Gayl had been a volunteer at La Phare, a twice weekly sit-down meal for homeless people hosted by the Salvation Army and manned by STC volunteers. As she tried to prepared meals for 150 people in the tiny kitchen there, she thought about the huge industrial kitchen at her church, Holy Trinity Anglican, and she approached them to see if they would let them prepare food there.

The answer was yes! And with the pandemic, the need for takeaway meals grew as soup kitchens and shelters shut their doors. At the time, the Community Kitchen became particularly known for its muffins, part of the breakfasts served to people on the streets. You can see Gayl here with some of the famous muffins!

During the pandemic, we made an episode about this called Compassion, Courage and Coronavirus featuring these food projects that you might enjoy.

On the first day we visited the Community Kitchen, they welcomed a guest chef from the US State Department’s Culinary Corps. (We joked that if this really were the Avengers, this partner would be Captain America!) Chef Kevin Tian has his own highly rated restaurant called Moon Rabbit in Washington DC, but today he is making chickpea stew in the Community Kitchen.

In the middle picture, Chef Kevin is with Aline, the Operations Manager and Akra, the Kitchen Manager, both employees of the Community Kitchen. Aline and Akra welcome and manage the STC volunteers that come to help each day. Each week they produce over 5000 meals which are delivered by STC volunteers to other non-profits (such as the Humanitarian Hub, in partnership with the Red Cross)… where further STC volunteers will serve them to hungry people.

Virtually all of the food produced by the Community Kitchen is vegan, as this allows for most of the dietary restrictions of the clients (people who eat halal, for example. However, Akra told us that they vary the dishes every day, changing up the vegetables and carbohydrates used, so that the meals are not bland or boring.

Nathan Torrini, Marie Bennett, and Jeremie Malengreaux make up the Executive Team of Serve the City Brussels. In the episode, we said that if this partnership were the Avengers, Nathan would be Nick Fury, because as Executive Director he is the one who manages the project partnerships with other non-profits and social services (calling the Avengers to assemble!) Nathan told us that he has many more inquiries from other potential partner organizations who want to add value to their operations through STC volunteer teams.

Jeremie is the author of the ServeNow app, which is used by Brussels to recruit, register and organize volunteers on projects. (Jeremie was not surprised when we identified him with the techno-savvy Avenger Tony Stark in the episode!) The ServeNow app has been a game-changer in terms of mobilization, and is now beginning to be used by other STC cities (e.g. Paris, Dublin and Lisbon). Aline, the Operations Manager at the Community Kitchen, said:

We always know how many people we’ll have for the volunteers. They can just cancel their shift if something happened and they cannot come. So we have a really good track of who will be there to help. It’s really way easier, in the partnership with the volunteers. I can’t imagine how we would run this project without the ServeNow app.
Aline, Community Kitchen

Below is a video about the ServeNow app:

We visited the Community Kitchen again on a Tuesday when it was running its weekly Food Bank. This is done in partnership with L’Olivier, a social and legal assistance non-profit for refugees. Each week, about 80-90 people wait their turn to choose six items from a minimum of twelve non-perishable foodstuffs. While they are waiting, volunteers serve coffee, tea and cookies for free from the church coffee bar, and afterwards, people are welcome to eat or take home a meal from the Community Kitchen.

Our guides at the Food Bank were Annie Bolger and Chris DeFortis (below). Annie is one of the chaplains at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, which still hosts the Community Kitchen although it is now an independent non-profit, and she acts as the church liaison. Chris, though he works full-time at NATO, founded L’Olivier in 1992; it was one of STC Brussels’ first partnerships when it started almost 20 years ago.

If you want to learn more about the Community Kitchen, here’s an article from the Brussels Times.

Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 6

A bite from a radioactive spider gave super-abilities to Peter Parker, an ordinary teenager from Queens, New York. But having been raised by his aunt and uncle to have compassion for the people around him, he realized that these powers could be used for the good of his neighbourhood.

One of Peter Parker’s famous quotes is: “Not everybody may be meant to make a difference. But for me, the choice to live an ordinary life is no longer an option.” This is how he became the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman – by using his compassion and abilities to make a difference. In this episode, we see ordinary people using their compassion and abilities to do extraordinary things for THEIR neighbourhoods, caring for both the people and the place.

We meet the Core Team of Serve the City Manila, who care about both the poverty and the environmental degradation in which their neighbours live… and come up with creative ways to address these problems. We also see how Serve the City volunteers in Luxembourg, Lisbon, and Ulan Bataar care about people through environmental initiatives. Transforming neighbourhoods is a challenge… but as Spider-Man says: “Anyone can win a fight when the odds are easy! It’s when the going’s tough, when there seems to be no chance – that’s when it counts.”

Listen to this episode here:

We also found a couple of stories about other people around the world who have become Spider-Man to clean up their neighbourhoods — you can see these stories at the bottom of this post!

In October 2024, a team from Serve the City International came to Manila in the Philippines to do some training of the Serve the City Core Team. The team was mostly made up of pastors working in disadvantaged areas of Metro Manila who wanted to see transformation in their neighbourhoods.

Prior to the training, the team had done some food outreach projects with single parent families in their neighbourhoods. In the pictures you can see Celso Manangan, the City Leader of STC Manila handing out food to indigent children. You can also see, in the second picture, how grateful these children were to receive the food. Mario, one of the pastors, said: “I was touched by these children because of this food that we gave to them. If you can see their happiness, you would cry.”

The STCi team that came included Rene Mally, STC board member (far left, seated next to Celso and his wife), who also led a workshop on Environmental Volunteering that turned out to be quite significant. Also present (left to right), were Hazel Ebenezer (STC Asia/Pacific Coordinator), Daniel Kim (STC CFO), Shannon Deal (City Trainer and Serving Stories producer) and Carlton Deal (STC founder and CEO), as well as a visiting friend from Indonesia.

For three days, the Core Team interacted with training from the STCi members and discussed the best ways to help the people of their neighbourhoods, both in the poverty and the environmental conditions they face. Though Celso had experience with Serve the City in Geneva, it was important for the team to discover how best to encourage volunteering in their own context. (At right, Celso addresses the group.)

One of the environmental topics was the problem of plastic pollution. The Pasig River, which you can see here, is one of seven rivers in the Philippines which together are responsible for 25% of plastic waste in the oceans.

A youth pastor named Joel (second from right), had the idea of letting children and youth in their neighbourhoods trade plastic they collected for food, thus cleaning up the environment while giving them the dignity of trading on their work. Randy (in red) and Patrick (in black), who run a sports program together at another church, thought that the young people they worked with could also volunteer with this project. Many other ideas, including ways to include educational opportunities for the kids, were also suggested.

This project is now under development by STC Manila, who are interacting with government and other agencies to recycle the plastics collected by young people in these neighbourhoods, and working to create the infrastructure to run the project.

Another project that was initiated as a result of ideas from the consultation was a tree planting project, an idea of Celso’s (he is at far right). STC Manila acquired 1000 seedling trees from the Ministry of the Environment and got people in the target neighbourhoods to plant them in their yards and vacant lots. Some of the trees were fruit trees and others were trees that would grow quickly and could be cut down for wood in a few years; but for now they will provide shade and fresh air. Serve the City also provided vegetable plants for people to grow.

Serve the City Philippines knows it’s cool to be kind! As they understand the connections between people and place in their neighbourhoods, we expect to see much transformation in the future!

We talked again to Nicolas Duprey, City Leader of STC Luxembourg (centre) about the impact of cleanliness (or lack thereof) on vulnerable people. He told us that depression decreased 70% for people in poverty when their neighbourhoods were cleaned.

If you want to hear more about environmental initiatives in Luxembourg, listen to Environment: Gotta Clean Up This City!

Can you tell the volunteers from the “beneficiaries”? At our last Serving Stories Live, Austin Silva Mota from Lisbon, Portugal told a story of people from a homeless shelter and volunteers making their neighbourhood more beautiful, side by side.

Javkhaa Ganbaatar, leader of STC Mongolia shared with us another story about a tree planting initiative that they undertake twice a year. In Ulaan Baatar, planting trees is very important to prevent overgrazed pasturelands from becoming deserts.

The trees are bought from the national park service through donations, and the national park rangers care for them after they are planted. Javkhaa says it’s a fun day for the whole family!

We found these cool stories about two different guys in two different countries who dress up as Spiderman to do environmental projects! The first guy is in Indonesia and in fact dresses up specifically to deal with plastic pollution! Read the story HERE. The second guy, in Nigeria, is featured in this clip:

Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 5

Saints were the superheroes of the medieval world. So this Christmas on Serving Stories, we remember one of these saints, remembered each Christmas for his compassion, generosity, and willingness to forsake his own comfort to provide for someone else in need. The saint we are talking about is remembered in a carol as Good King Wenceslas.

In actual fact, Wenceslas was not a king, but a Duke in old Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) in the 10th century. He was well-known for his kindness and generosity to the poor. One of his early biographers wrote about him:

“Rising every night from his noble bed, with bare feet and only one chamberlain, he went around to God’s churches and gave alms generously to widows, orphans, those in prison and afflicted by every difficulty, so much so that he was considered, not a prince, but the father of all the wretched.”
Cosmas of Prague

The English carol about “Good King Wenceslas” was taken from a book of children’s stories about saints by the hymnwriter John Mason Neale in 1853. It tells how Wenceslas, looking out his window on the day after Christmas, noticed a poor man gathering sticks for a fire. After asking where the man lived, he went himself out in the snow, along with his page, to bring the man food and fuel. When the page became cold pushing through the snow, Wenceslas invited him to follow in his own boot prints, and he would find himself warmed. The carol ends:

Therefore, men and women, be sure,
grace and wealth possessing,
you that now will bless the poor
shall yourselves find blessing.
John Mason Neale

In this week’s episode, we discover how many volunteers in cities all over the world are walking in Wenceslas’ bootprints in this Christmas season. Having noticed people less fortunate than themselves out their windows, they are sharing generosity at some cost to themselves. Our primary story focuses on Serve the City Berlin, and a massive gift distribution to more than 2000 refugee children, but we also visit four other STC cities—Amsterdam, Dublin, Eldoret, and the Virginia Peninsula—to see what generosity looks like in those places.

Serving Stories host Ani Deal and sound designer/composer Parker Deal were together recently in the USA, and they recorded “Good King Wenceslas” together! (The reason their voices blend so well is that they are brother and sister!) You can listen to the whole carol below.

Christmas Generosity

Serve the City Berlin (Germany)

Our principal story in this episode features Serve the City Berlin, where over 100 volunteers, including employees from eight different companies, packed over 2400 Christmas packages for refugee children in 23 Berlin shelters. The gifts were designed for different age groups in consultation with shelter leaders, and distributed at the various shelter Christmas parties. That’s a lot of generosity!

Pictured above is STC Berlin City Leader Christine Thumm, along with Core Team member Melinda Means, packing Christmas gifts in the space generously made available to them every year by a local refugee shelter for this project. This is the tenth year STC Berlin has served refugee children in this way.

This episode centers on a particular day when the volunteers wrapping presents not only included employees of a recruitment agency but also elderly people in a retirement home. The corporate volunteers, a team of 11 from Kummer Consulting, had the generosity to transport all the materials to the home so that the residents could also take part in the project. William Whittenberg, a member of the STC Berlin Core Team, acted as Serving Stories’ roving reporter to interview the participants (in picture at left).

Two of the residents, Frau Alin and Frau Fank, allowed William to interview them. We were struck that some of these elderly residents had some commonalities with the children for whom they were wrapping gifts: they had experienced war and loss during their childhood.

In putting together the script for the episode, producer Shannon Deal recruited the help of a German friend, Ulrike Truderung, to translate the interviews. Ulrike also had some insights that might not have been obvious just by reading the transcripts. If you are interested to follow this conversation, you can read the transcript of it HERE.

If you want to hear some other stories from STC Berlin, listen to Humility: Mopping Mayors and Stumbling Stones and Serving Stories – Episode 1.3 – Berlin, DE.

Serve the City Amsterdam (Netherlands)

Serve the City Amsterdam demonstrated generosity to undocumented families living in the city by inviting Amsterdammers to create a “Reverse Advent Box.” Normally, you take 24 gifts for yourself from an Advent box, but in this case people were invited to put in specific items from their own house to make it possible for someone else to celebrate Christmas. Above, you can see some of the donated boxes; at right is the “Reverse Advent Calendar” list.

If you want to find out more about the “Reverse Advent” initiative, check it out HERE.

Volunteers in Amsterdam also served children living in refugee shelters by distributing presents to them for Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas’ Day), on December 6. This is the traditional time when children in the Netherlands receive their gifts during the holiday season.

If you want to hear some other stories from STC Amsterdam, listen to Environment: Gotta Clean Up This City! and Hope: Everyone’s Got Talent!

Serve the City Dublin (Ireland)

Ronan Coffey, STC Ireland director (standing at right), told us about a project of generosity extended to the elderly and disabled clients of STC Dublin who over the years have been helped through DIY and decluttering projects in their homes.

In conjunction with employees from the French power company EDF, volunteers packed boxes full of Christmas goodies: cookies, chocolates, chips, and Christmas crackers, among other things. But the most important addition to the boxes was a handwritten Christmas card, personally addressed to the client. For some of the recipients this might have been the only Christmas greeting they received this year. Below are volunteers and EDF employees with some of the fruits of their labors.

If you want to hear other stories from STC Dublin, listen to Compassion: A Hundred Thousand Welcomes and COVID Kindness – Episode 1 – When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.

Serve the City Peninsula (VA, USA)

STC Peninsula also chose to show generosity to elderly clients with whom they already had a relationship. Every month, volunteers go to play bingo with residents at Spratley House and Ash Manor, two low-income senior living facilities. At left, Cindy Hahne, STC Peninsula City Leader, oversees the packing of gift bags for residents, including handmade white boards that volunteers wrote positive messages on.

After packing the bags, volunteers went door to door to personally deliver their goodies!

If you want to hear some other stories from STC Peninsula, listen to Love: Kindness Wherever You Look! and Humility: Mopping Mayors and Stumbling Stones.

We also interviewed STC City Leader Leah Ngugi from Eldoret, Kenya. Her “Good King Wenceslas” project is making tortillas for street people, which will take place Christmas Day. If you want to hear a story from Eldoret, listen to Stand Up to Villains.

Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 4

Pretty much every superhero’s goal is to clean up their city! Usually this means putting the bad guys in jail… but there are people serving like superheroes who have taken this task more literally, and are looking to clean up the environment in their city.

The superhero for this episode is Captain Planet, the star of a cheesy 90s Saturday morning cartoon, complete with green mullet hairdo! Despite low budget animation and silly villain names, this show encouraged kids to care about cleaning up their environment, and the power of doing it together.

(You can watch the intro to this retro gem HERE.)

In this episode of Serving Stories, we follow our own Planeteers from STC Amsterdam, STC Luxembourg, and STC Wavre (Belgium) on different innovative environmental initiatives to save the planet!

Innovative Environmental Volunteering

Instead of presenting today’s episode, our regular Serving Stories host, Ani Deal, is one of the featured participants in it! (Producer Shannon Deal steps in as host for this week.) For the last two years, when Ani wasn’t presenting podcasts, she worked as an Amsterdam tour guide leading visitors around the city. In this picture, she is guiding a group around Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter on an Anne Frank tour. But the tour in this episode is quite different…

Ani is leading this group of employees from the Dutch company Adyen on a Trash Tour in Vondel Park, in downtown Amsterdam. This environmental project involves two aspects: an actual tour of the park, and cleaning up trash as they find it. In their hands, volunteers hold trash bingo cards for keeping track of the types of trash they find.

As you can see in the middle picture, the Adyen team had a ton of trash to clean up… especially cigarette butts! But eventually they were able to dump all the many bits of rubbish they found with a sense of accomplishment that they had made a difference in the city environment. (Adyen’s environmental goals as a company can be found here.)

The Trash Tour is a regular environmental project of STC Amsterdam! Here are a few other corporate teams that have participated… The park is kept cleaner because of the efforts of all these multiple teams. As we always say in Serve the City: Many people doing small things together can make a big difference!

(If you want to listen to another Serving Stories episode featuring STC Amsterdam, check out Hope: Everyone’s Got Talent!)

STC Luxembourg is another community that has numerous environmental initiatives. City Leader Nicolas Duprey told us about the continuous clean-up projects they have all over the country. At right and below are Nicolas and his team on World Cleanup Day, when they also worked to gather 40 000 cigarette butts! You can see that in addition to collecting it, they have also separated the trash so it can be recycled.

STC Luxembourg partners with a local company called Shime, that has a project called MéGO! (“Megot” is the word for “cigarette butt” in French.) They collect cigarette butts—which are largely made of plastice, surprisingly, and depollute them. They then transform the butts into park benches! Incredible, right? (You can check out their project HERE.)

Below, Nicolas and his team are doing environmental awareness raising project for MéGO! including handing out free plastic ashtrays made out of recycled cigarette butts (the little round packages on the right side photo).

We also heard about an award-winning piece of trash art created by STC Luxembourg, pictured below! This whale is created out of thousands of discarded cigarette butts and plastic trash, to highlight the fact that 80% of the pollutants in our ocean environment originate on the land.

(If you want to hear another Serving Stories episode featuring STC Luxembourg (and Christmas!), listen to Respect: In the Stockings of Saint Nicholas from Season 2.)

Serve the City Wavre, just south of Brussels in Belgium, has developed a partnership with the environmental association Aer Aqua Terra, devoted to cleaning up the river Dyle. (You can read more—in French—about this association HERE.) The association provides the water gear and tools, and the volunteers provide the manpower.

Volunteers use tools to dig out refuse embedded in the river bed and sort it on a small boat that they tow along with them. Sorting the rubbish makes it much easier to recycle.

At the end of the action, volunteers bring back the refuse to be recycled. The most common objects found in the river are wet wipes that have been flushed down someone’s toilet. Few people know that the vast majority of wet wipes are made with plastic and are not biodegradable. Sewer overflows sweep these wipes into rivers, and the volunteers retrieve buckets full of them on every cleaning. (You can read more about the environmental wet wipes problem in this article.)

And now… the promised link to the intro of Captain Planet! The power is yours!

Serve Like a Superhero: Season 3, Episode 3

In every superhero movie, there is a moment when someone says that what they are trying to accomplish is impossible… that it is better to give up. And this is when the superhero needs to show persistence, to keep on going despite the obstacles!

We particularly thought of the persistence of Wonder Woman… check out the clip at the bottom of this post! And we even found a kid’s book called “Wonder Woman Perseveres”!

In this episode, we feature a number of wonder women who are persevering despite obstacles! Matilde Newman, the City Leader of STC Gold Coast, in Queensland, Australia, and her co-leader Fiorenza Provenzano share with us both the challenges of getting started in a new city and new culture, and what it has taken to push through in persistence. And we meet women who have gathered around them on the way, adding their own strengths to the endeavour!

Listen to this episode here:

Meet Fiorenza and Matilde — two indomitable women who have worked hard and persistently over the past year to start the first Serve the City community in Australia. Both women have extensive STC experience prior to coming to Australia: Matilde worked for STC Amsterdam, and Fiorenza volunteered with STC Brussels.

Matilde started out with STC Amsterdam in 2012 as first a volunteer, then a project leader, then a member of the core team. Eventually she made a job of it by taking over for the Amsterdam City Leader who was on maternity leave. And then she stayed on to start the youth volunteering program Ympact 1020, which is still going strong today!

You can listen to an episode of our podcast featuring Ympact 1020, the program Matilde started, here: Hope: Everyone’s Got Talent!

As s a young mother, Matilde sometimes brought her kids to her favorite project in a nursing home. Here is Matilde with her two sons, Timothy and Charlie, helping out with Bingo.

When she moved to Australia in 2018, Matilde had it in mind that she would start Serve the City there in the Gold Coast. And in spite of the obstacles of settling into a new culture and going through COVID lockdowns, she persisted with that dream. She did the training to become a STC City Leader, and started making contacts for volunteers and partnerships. Here is Matilde with her husband, two boys and a handful of friends on their first serving project in August 2023, at a local community garden.

Rebecca, the disabled lady who managed the garden, became their first STC volunteer! In spite of the fact that she uses a walker and needs help with transport, she persists in participating on STC community day projects.

Thanks to the persistence of Matilde and Fiorenza, the volunteer community has grown, and Serve the City Australia is now an officially registered non-profit!

Here volunteers gather for the kick-off of a Community Day in October 2024 in the local library where they meet, and celebrate the incorporation of STC Australia with a cake. On this particular Community Day, volunteers could choose from four different projects… pictures below!

The first project was done in partnership with Clean Up Australia, in a local park near the library. It allowed families with children to volunteer… not the usual in a place where it is normal to have background checks and CV approval before participating in volunteering. Matilde believes that STC Australia must persist in making one-off volunteering normal, to create better communities.

Aren’t they adorable? The second project involves volunteers bringing their dogs into a nursing home to interact with the clients. Matilde’s previous experience in nursing homes meant she particularly wanted to do a project like this, but ran into roadblocks with nursing home regulations. However, Matilde’s persistence resulted in contact with a nursing home where the husband of a Core Team member stays. The team is sure that the good experience of the staff in this centre will open up others!

Another project, also for the benefit of nursing homes, was to create a Curiosity Cupboard, a portable cabinet that would contain items to stimulate conversation with elderly people and could be given to them as gifts. Shan Berserik, one of the Core Team members (far left, next to Matilde), bought a cabinet from a thrift store. Dio, a relative of Fiorenza who is also a carpenter, came along with his family and helped transform it into a usable object.

The final project of the day was a restoration of the fence and container garden at the house of Heather (far right above). Heather had recently spent a long time in the hospital and many of her plants had died. She approached Matilde at the meeting of a community garden run by Yvette (far left), and asked for help from Serve the City. Volunteers donated tons of plants to restore the garden — including Rebecca, the disabled lady in whose garden STC first worked (next to Heather).

Matilde, Fiorenza, and the ladies of the Core Team, have continued to keep on going persistently to get STC Australia started. Despite obstacles and setbacks and people saying “We can’t,” they have said, “No, but that’s what I’m going to do.” Like Diana in the video below, they are wonder women… they do not give up, and they will reach their goal!