Creating a Community Kitchen Accessible to All
It’s ten-to-six on Tuesday evening. Supper Club hasn’t officially started, but the kitchen at Manitoba Possible’s 825 Sherbrook Street location is already alive.
Recreation Facilitator, McKenna, is on a mission. She opens one cupboard, then another, then a third. She digs through shelves and drawers searching for the hand mixer. She finds the whisk attachments first.
But not the handle.
She pauses the search as each person enters the kitchen, greeting every arrival with excitement and details about tonight’s meal: chicken burgers, tater tots, and pudding for dessert.
By 6:00 the room is packed. And everyone is eager to help find the hand mixer.
“I found a whisk,” someone calls out, holding it up. “But it doesn’t have a handle!”
The solution, eventually, is the blender. McKenna pulls it onto the counter as she gives instructions on mixing the pudding. Others are gathered around the table slicing tomatoes, washing lettuce, and setting places.
The meal comes together the way Supper Club often does—imperfectly, but with a lot of collaboration, conversation and joy.
Manitoba Possible’s kitchen space was built over two decades ago to accommodate a growing demand for inclusive recreation programs. Time has started to show itself in the small space, outdated accessibility, aging appliances, and the whisk that can no longer do its job.
Still, every year, donor support makes it possible prepare and share more than 400 meals around this table through Manitoba Possible’s Supper Club and Breakfast Club.
“These are by far our most popular programs and there is always a wait list,” explains McKenna. “I can only fit 15 participants in this kitchen at a time, but we could easily have 50 people join us for each meal, if space allowed. We want to be able to grow this community, bring more people to our table.”
For Bill, attending Supper Club has been a regular part of his social calendar for three years. From the beginning, he felt a sense of belonging, and he says the program has changed his life.
“It’s given me a lot of opportunity to connect with people like myself,” he says. “This place also helped me with my confidence, feeling like a normal human being and being part of a truly amazing community. I would be lost without a community like this.”
Supper Club is part of Manitoba Possible’s broader Recreation, Leisure, and Accessible Sport program. Every year, your donations allow close to 1,000 Manitobans to take part in barrier-free activities from summer camps to sledge hockey. Demand for the programs is growing, outpacing the spaces they’re housed in.
“When we began imagining a new home for Manitoba Possible, a welcoming and accessible community gathering place was one of the most integral needs,” says Manitoba Possible CEO, Lindsey Cooke. “When spaces are designed for everyone, our whole community becomes stronger. The kitchen is an example of that. It’ll be a welcoming place to connect and see what truly inclusive, purpose‑built design can make possible.”
It’s a vision that comes directly from evenings like this at Supper Club—a place where more Manitobans with disabilities can come share a meal and feel truly included.
We need your help to make this vision a reality.
The 1,800-square-foot, community kitchen will include hearing loop systems to support communication for individuals with hearing aids or cochlear implants; multi-level wheelchair accessible countertops; accessible appliances; a tactile navigation path along the flooring of the hallway; spotlights for ASL interpreters; an adjacent universally accessible washroom with height-adjustable toilets, electronic lifts, and adult change table.
Manitoba Possible’s new space will stand model of what’s possible in our province and beyond. And together, we can create a welcoming gathering place where everyone has a seat at the table.