Nourishing Connections: Strengthening Community and Volunteer Engagement at Jubilee Café

Academic Mentor | Johnell Bentz
Community Partner | Jubilee Café | Community United Church of Christ

Project Description
Jubilee Café is a seven-year-old free community meal service sponsored by the Community United Church of Christ, located in the heart of the University of Illinois’ Campustown. The café serves 40–100 meals weekly, year-round, to all students and community members. In addition to providing hot, home-cooked meals, the café offers free take-home food and health products, including safer sex kits, Narcan, and menstruation kits.

At Jubilee Café, building a sense of community is just as important as serving meals. Guests are given menus to choose their entrees, beverages, and desserts, and the atmosphere encourages interaction and connection. Approximately 35–40 volunteers, including 20–30 University of Illinois students, help prepare and serve the meals each week. While the café has a steady stream of guests, the team seeks to better understand how people hear about the café and how to connect with others in the community who may benefit from their services.

This project focuses on developing and administering a survey to gather feedback from guests and volunteers, collecting data over several weeks, and analyzing the results to identify common themes. The findings will help the café improve its outreach efforts and create a more sustainable system for recruiting and organizing volunteers.

Role of the Community-Academic Scholar
The scholar will:

• Take an active role in developing and disseminating a survey to collect feedback from Jubilee Café’s guests and volunteers
• Attend the café’s Monday night events to interact directly with community members, conducting interviews and administering surveys
• Analyze the data collected to identify trends and common themes
• Review existing volunteer data to inform potential online volunteer management platforms, such as Illini GivePulse
• Propose a sustainable system for managing volunteer recruitment and retention, documenting their recommendations in a detailed plan.