The University’s unique relationship with St. John’s Bread and Life Soup Kitchen in Brooklyn provides the groundwork for effective, sustained community-based research, service-learning and other collaborations aimed at increasing students' understanding of poverty, engaging them in constructive research and solutions to poverty.
An Introduction to St. John's Bread and Life Soup Kitchen St. John’s Bread and Life was founded in 1982 and is located at 75 Lewis Avenue in the original building of St. John’s University. As a ministry of the Daughters of Charity and the Vincentian Fathers at St. John the Baptist Parish, it soon expanded beyond the parish boundaries. Recognizing the increasing involvement of University personnel, Bread and Life grew to be a freestanding not-for-profit corporation and recently came to be officially sponsored by St. John's University.
Today, Bread and Life continues to address the issues of hunger and poverty in Brooklyn and Queens. Every day, Bread and Life serves over 1,000 meals to hungry New Yorkers and offers many other services to its clients.