Everyone who walks into Our Big Kitchen says a similar thing: they experience a wonderful feeling of congeniality when they are in the space.
“It’s such a beautiful place and the feeling there is so beautiful,” volunteer Deborah Travers says. “It’s very vibrant, everybody chats.”
Fellow volunteer and former Qantas pilot, Richard Tainsh, agrees, saying the hours slip by when you’re working while chatting to people. “We have a very diverse range of people volunteering. Every time I go there I meet someone new and I find it quite stimulating.”
It’s a sentiment shared by many of the volunteers who give up their time in the kitchen to make food for anyone who needs a meal across Sydney. But the feeling inside the kitchen is about much more than just putting your head down and preparing meals.
Deborah says: “It makes no difference if you don’t know anyone when you arrive; we all introduce ourselves. There’s a team spirit, there’s a bonding. You feel like you’re doing something really worthwhile and everyone is happy because we are all working towards the same goal.”
Laya Slavin, who founded the kitchen with her husband, Rabbi Doctor Dovid Slavin, says: “Everyone asks us, why are you on such a high? It’s because of Vitamin V. Volunteering. When you give to other people, nothing makes you happier in life.
“Like the kitchen is the heart of the home, we felt we wanted to create the heart of the community. It doesn’t matter what my background is or where I’m from, I come in and I have a place where I belong and I can do good.”
Laya goes on to say when it came to choosing a name, they called it Our Big Kitchen “because before you’ve even stepped foot in here, you feel welcome and feel accepted”.
Dovid says: “The proof is in the pudding. You’ve got to experience it. When people see it for themselves, it touches a place that’s important to them.”
Knowing that somebody out there is going hungry is a feeling that Dovid describes as “enough to drive him crazy”. He says: “I don’t like to see food thrown out and I definitely don’t like seeing people going hungry.”
Much of this is influenced by the experiences of Dovid’s and Laya’s parents after World War II.
“Both Laya and I come from parents who survived the war in different ways,” Dovid says. “My mother speaks about it often. For her hunger is an absolute curse. It’s not about feeling peckish or skipping lunch. The hunger when you haven’t eaten in a long time and when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from … it’s a psychological hunger.”
“My mother always carries food in her bag because when that hunger sets in it’s paralysing. You go into a state of mental incapability of doing anything else. It’s horrible…and I heard about it a lot growing up.”
Laya says: “Coming from post-war we had a lot of gentlemen who had lost everyone. A lot of them were sole survivors and they would come into our home and we would serve them with the greatest dignity. I wanted to reproduce that in our home. But also being able to do that on a community level.”
Community is at the heart of everything that happens in the kitchen. “This is a community kitchen,” Laya says. “You’re welcomed. You’re loved. And you’re needed.”
Ling, another volunteer who is originally from Malaysia, confirms this. “I love interacting with the other volunteers and it is an awesome and satisfying feeling to give back to the community which has given me so much as an immigrant,” she says. She used to manage five doctors as a medical practice manager, a role in which she got to meet lots of people, but then she retired. Coming to the kitchen, she says, “is a good opportunity to meet people again”.
At the centre of it all are Laya and Dovid.
Richard says: “Laya is very encouraging and lively around the place and seems to be very appreciative of everyone’s effort.”
Deborah says: “There’s a definite joy. There’s a real sense of feel-good. Everybody should do it. It’s great for the spirit.”
The kitchen operated as usual while NSW went into lockdown, relying heavily on the many volunteers who turned up to help. But now Sydney is coming out of lockdown, Laya has some words of advice: “While we are figuring things out, come and bake. While all the thinking is happening, 20 or 30 people can be helped. What we really feel here is it’s tangible help, it’s tangible love. Tangible kindness.”
As Dovid says: “When you talk about what really matters it’s the things you have done that contribute to a better world, to leave it better than you found it, that matter the most.”
This is a four part series in partnership with Helga’s. Helga’s is on a mission to spread kindness.
Read more about Helga’s Kindness mission here.
Photographs: Paul Blackmore
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