The 23rd annual Breadline Sunday, a bread sale to support St. John's Breadline in Springfield, will be observed in area churches and synagogues after services on Nov. 22 and Nov. 23. The event takes place every year the weekend before Thanksgiving.

This year Schnucks Supermarkets, which has supported the program for a dozen years, will donate 9,000 loaves of bread. The bread will be offered to congregations in exchange for a $3 donation to support the mission of the Breadline.

Every year volunteers meet early on Saturday morning at the Sacred Heart-Griffin west campus to label and bag loaves so that church and synagogue volunteers can pick them up in the school parking lot. They then offer them for sale on Saturday evening and on Sunday.

"We usually have 40 to 50 loyal volunteers who show up like clockwork every year. We don't even have to put out a call for help," says Judy Kohlrus, administrative assistant to the area director at Springfield Catholic Charities.

"Some of them unload the semi truck first thing in the morning and others label and bag the loaves," she says. "It really is a lot of physical labor for the volunteers at the school and the people at the churches."

In past years, over 65 churches and synagogues in Springfield, Rochester, Illiopolis, Riverton, Chatham, Athens, New Berlin, Sherman, Petersburg, Pleasant Plains and Virden have participated. "These places are all in the three-county area that we serve," says Kohlrus.

Last year, St. John's Breadline was able to serve 207,987 meals in large part because of the generous community support on Breadline Sunday. St. John's Breadline, located at 430 N. Fifth St., is open every day of the year to serve hot, nutritious meals to anyone in need.

Over the last year or so, the Breadline has begun to serve a broader group of people, Kohlrus says. "The trend now is that more families are coming in for meals," she says. "For the most part they are working families. These are people who are doing all they can just to survive."

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Breadline, which has provided free food for the needy since 1928, just one year prior to the beginning of the Great Depression.