No neighbor
eats alone.

Kindred runs a free Saturday grocery market, a Tuesday dinner for the whole block, and a teaching kitchen, all out of the old firehouse on Garland Avenue. No forms. No lines around the block. No shame.

Volunteer a shift Give monthly
Volunteers packing grocery boxes in the bright firehouse hall on a Saturday morning
The Saturday market, firehouse hallDoors at nine. No paperwork, ever.
Why we exist

Hunger in Marden is quiet, close, and completely fixable.

1 in 8

households in Harker County skipped a meal last month to cover another bill

38%

of kids at Marden Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch

2.4 mi

from the flats to the nearest full-service grocery store, with no direct bus

Sources: the 2025 Harker County food access survey, school district enrollment data, and our own intake sheets. We update these numbers every January.

What we run

Three programs, every week, rain or shine.

Crates of fresh produce in morning light at the Saturday market
01

Weekly groceries

Every Saturday morning the firehouse hall turns into a market. You push a cart and choose your own groceries, because dignity is picking the produce yourself. Fresh vegetables from 14 partner farms, staples by the case, diapers whenever we can get them. If you show up, you qualify.

312 families · Saturdays 9 to noon
Neighbors serving each other at the long Tuesday dinner table
02

Tuesday community dinner

One long table down the middle of the hall, 140 chairs, and a menu built on what Saturday didn't sell. Retired line cooks run the stove. Teenagers run the floor and earn service hours doing it. Come alone and you will leave having argued about basketball with somebody's grandmother.

140 seats · Tuesdays at 6
Hands kneading dough together in the teaching kitchen
03

The teaching kitchen

Eight weeks, sixteen aprons, and a graduation dinner the class cooks themselves. The course covers shopping the sales, cooking once for the whole week, and thirty dinners that cost under four dollars a plate. Every graduate leaves with a chef's knife and a cast-iron skillet. 214 graduates so far, and four of them now teach.

16 seats · 8 weeks · always free
Since 2017
186,000meals shared
23,400volunteer hours last year
14partner farms
9years on Garland Avenue
Luz Navarro in her apron in the Kindred kitchen
One story
"The first Saturday, I kept my eyes on my shoes and took the box. The second Saturday, I asked where they kept the aprons. Nobody made either Saturday feel different."
Luz Navarro · Saturday shopper, 2021 · Tuesday dinner lead ever since

Luz came to the market the year her husband died and the pension stopped stretching. She has run the Tuesday dinner line since 2022 and teaches week four of the kitchen course, the adobo week, the one nobody skips.

How to help

Pick the way in that fits. All three matter.

Volunteer a shift

Saturday market, Tuesday dinner, or a weeknight class. Three hours of real work, no meetings, and one shift packs groceries for forty families.

volunteer@kindred.example

Give monthly

Thirty-two dollars a month fills a family's cart every Saturday. Monthly gifts let us promise our farmers a season instead of a weekend.

give@kindred.example

Partner with us

Farms, grocers, congregations, and work crews. A standing crate order, a gleaning run, or a matched drive goes further than a one-off pallet.

partners@kindred.example

88 cents of every dollar goes straight to food and programs.

The other twelve keep the walk-in cold, the van on the road, and the lights on. Our books are open. Email books@kindred.example and the latest financials go out the same week.

88¢ food and programs7¢ operations5¢ raising the next dollar

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