Our members provide Christian outreach through meals and distribution of toiletries to those in need in the Allison Hill section of Harrisburg.

In addition, the Common Ground Café provides a free breakfast to Allison Hill residents on the last Saturday of each month, from 9 to 11 am. Each breakfast serves about 200 adults and children. The menu is simple: pancakes, eggs, sausage/bacon/ham, grits and fruit. Guests arrive, are greeted, then seated and served restaurant style.  

Volunteers cook, serve and clean and also run a children’s activity area. Volunteers are from churches, businesses, organizations and Allison Hill residents. There are usually 20 to 30 volunteers.

The food is good, the conversations are better. Guests and volunteers chat and laugh as they share food and stories. There is also the time for serious conversations about what is happening on the Hill, in Harrisburg, the country and the world.

Children run around playing, doing crafts or playing games at the activity table, or reading a book from the children’s library. You can tell those who have been to a breakfast before, they bring the new kids up and show them where everything is.

People come to the Common Ground Café the first time for the food or to be of service, but they keep coming back for the community, building relationships, celebrating what makes us unique and discovering all the things we have in common