Volunteer with Sunrise Cafe – Spring 2023 Service Series

Full event information can be found here.

Start your morning off on a great note! Join Dwight Hall Wednesday mornings to volunteer at Sunrise Cafe. Volunteers will meet in front of Dwight Hall at 6:00am, walk together to Sunrise Cafe, and will return to campus by 9:00am.

Volunteers are strongly encouraged to wear N95 masks during service.

Sunrise Cafe has been serving breakfast without charge to New Haven’s homeless and hungry since 2015. Each weekday morning, the Cafe welcomes guests to the undercroft of St. Paul and St. James, near Wooster Square and three blocks south of the New Haven Green with white tablecloths, flowers and a rotating menu of fresh, warm, nutritious home-cooked food. Your generosity opens our doors.

Cheerful volunteers take each order individually, deliver the breakfast to our guest and help our paid chef in the kitchen. Thelma Ragsdale, Operations Manager, and our volunteers ensure every guest is warmly welcomed.

Sunrise Cafe is uniquely welcoming and secure, based on trust and mutual respect, and the rapport built between the volunteer servers and our guests. With a warm welcome and just two rules – no drugs on the premises and no arguments – Sunrise has become a community center for the homeless, a place to come every weekday morning and gather with friends.

Hungry friends come for the home-cooked, nourishing breakfast and stay for simple medical services offered by the Cornell Scott Health Center and access to support from social services to find housing.

Sunrise provides a unique opportunity to bridge New Haven’s inequalities that separate us from one another. Volunteers come once and become regulars. Guests and volunteers become friends and greet one another on the street.