Sarah Selkirk preps cheeseburgers with grilled onions, macaroni salad and fresh greens for Friday’s WE CARE Day lunch at Kansas City Community Kitchen.

Medical students with Kansas City University volunteered today at the Kansas City Community Kitchen located at 7th and the Paseo Boulevard to serve hot meals to some of Kansas City’s  houseless and most vulnerable populations.

Paul Creger, a 4th year Med Student at KCU preps tomatoes for Friday’s lunch at KC Community Kitchens as part of WE CARE Day

WE CARE Day is an annual day of giving at KCU and gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves in community service, partnering with local non profits to give back to the community. 

Quinn Smith, (right) from Chicago, and
Ali-Rida Beydoun, from Detroit, MI are both
2nd year students at KCU

Student volunteers worked at chopping and prepping vegetables and serving meals to roughly 500 clients over lunch on Friday. “This is the opportunity where students are able to roll up their sleeves and,  honestly they have a day off of school and they’re here serving their community so it’s pretty awesome,” said Sarah Selkirk who works in the Student Affairs Department at KCU.

For Chloe Lee, a 2nd year student from Los Angeles, California, community is at the heart of her mission.  “I feel like as a medical student, it goes beyond just providing health care for the community that you’re in,”Lee said. It also goes beyond the clinic or whatever we’re learning, medically related and I want to be able to help others through different means.”

Linda Aguilar, KCCC Front House Manager delivers fresh hot meals to hungry clients.

Addison Fleischman, Development Assistant with NourishKC said KCU’s commitment isn’t just a one and done event. “They’ve been a great resource of volunteers for us,” said Fleischman.  “They’re just right down the street so we have volunteers probably once a week from KCU so we’re super grateful  and we really appreciate them for coming especially today.”

About fifteen other KCU Med Students were at the Pendleton Heights orchard located at Lexington and Montgall. According to PHNA neighbor Whitney Blaire, fifteen student volunteers assisted with planting pollinator flowers and spreading mulch. they are quite the force to be reckoned with in two hours with 15 people and some very amazing equipment,” said Blaire. and they’re planting trees, we are putting in flowers actually okay. So pollinator flowers so like Missouri root of Vecchia, coneflowers and a little Bluestem grass.” We actually have blue orchard bees right now kind of doing their things right now so it feels good to kind of support the whole ecosystem by putting in more pollinator plants.”