“It can obviously never compare to performing or writing songs,” Bon Jovi said. “But what it does do is give you the same sense of fulfillment when you see the lives you touch”
After the success of his first two projects, a third Jon Bon Jovi Soul Kitchen community restaurant is about open doors at Rutgers-Newark University on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Newark, on January 23.
Soul Kitchens of a similar kind are located in places like Red Bank and Toms River.
“We all think it’s a rite of passage to study hard and eat Ramen noodles. How about if it’s the only thing you can afford?” Jon told ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ in a segment which aired on Sunday, November 24, according to a report.
”The Way To Feel Good Is To Do Good….Find Your Good and Do It” — Jon Bon Jovi @jonbonjovi #SundayThoughts #JBJSoulKitchen #Homeless https://t.co/ER9RB225EF pic.twitter.com/LjeP5Aellv
— Tiffani Bova (@Tiffani_Bova) November 24, 2019
These are restaurants that give customers the option to either pay for their food or volunteer in the kitchen to some capacity if they do not have money.
There is no price list on the menu’s items and people who opt for paying will have to give a minimum of $12 for a three-course meal, in part to help for the cost of someone else’s.
Acceptable forms of payment include credit card, cash or dining dollars and people are encouraged to pay upfront in order to cover the meal cost of a person in need.
In the aftermath of the Sandy superstorm, in 2015 and 2016, Spoon Full of Hope, in unison with the Gateway Church of Christ of Morganville, JBJ Soul Foundation and Bon Jovi’s Soul Kitchen, operated at Union Beach.
“The way to feel good is to do good. Find your good…and do it.” @jonbonjovi @JBJSoulFound @CBSSunday pic.twitter.com/fpznePqpS2
— Tracy Smith (@thattracysmith) November 24, 2019
Bon Jovi and his wife Dorothea Bongiovi revealed that they were planning to open more Soul Kitchens in different locations eventually.
“Hunger doesn’t look like what your mind’s eye might imagine,” she told CBS at the Red Bank Soul Kitchen.
“It’s the people at your church. It’s the kids that go to school with your kids. And I think that was eye-opening for a lot of the community here that said, ‘Oh, there’s no homeless people here’.”
As per the company’s mission statement, Bon Jovi created Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation in Philadelphia in 2006 in order to “combat issues that force families and individuals into economic despair.”
The story goes that his motivation for all this was awakened after he witnessed a homeless man sleeping on the gutter outside a hotel he was a guest at.
“It can obviously never compare to performing or writing songs,” he said on ‘CBS Sunday Morning’.
“But what it does do is give you the same sense of fulfillment, I think when I leave here at night and you see the lives you touch. I have left here, you know, after a long night of volunteering and said, ‘That makes you feel the same kind of good’, you know? And that’s what I say, the way to feel good is to do good, you know? Find your good – and do it.”
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