Selfless service with compassion is joy St. James Park, San Jose · Every Sunday morning

GOCS Global Organization for Community Services Contact

A young GOCS volunteer hands warm clothing across the table at St. James Park

St. James Park · San Jose, California

Every Sunday,
we set the table.

Since 2012, volunteers have driven into downtown San Jose every Sunday morning to serve a hot meal to our unhoused neighbors — and to stay long enough to talk.

How a Sunday works Our story

Every Sunday since 2012 501(c)(3) · EIN 47-5220339 Entirely volunteer-run

A Sunday

The food is why people come. It isn't why we stay.

Sunday starts at half past eight, at the back doors of restaurants around San Jose. Partner kitchens have the food ready; volunteers load it into cars and drive downtown.

By nine the folding tables are up at St. James Park and there is already a line. For the next hour it doesn't stop — people we have known for years, and people we are meeting for the first time.

Handing someone a plate takes a few seconds. We stay for the rest of the hour. We ask how the week went, we learn names and then we use them, and we listen to whatever someone wants to tell us. People living in this park spend most of their days being looked past. An hour of being spoken to like a person is not a small thing to be able to offer.

By ten the tables are folded, the cars are loaded, and the park is as we found it. Then we come back the following Sunday, as we have every week since 2012.

8:30 amCollect prepared food from partner restaurants across San Jose

9:00 amTables up at St. James Park; serving and conversation begin

10:00 amPacked down and gone — back again next Sunday

A volunteer hands a boxed meal across the table to a man in the park

People waiting in line along the path at St. James Park

By nine there is a line. Some of the people in it we have known for years.

St. James Park, San Jose

25,000+Meals served
since 2020

5,000+Items of clothing
distributed

$100k+Raised and spent
on the work

0Paid
staff

Cumulative figures, January 2020 to present. GOCS has served the Bay Area since 2012.

Our Work

One park. One hour. Every week.

We keep the work narrow so we can keep it consistent. People who have been let down repeatedly can count on us being in the same place at the same hour, week after week.

The Sunday meal

Local restaurants prepare the food. Volunteers collect it at half past eight, carry it to St. James Park, and serve it by hand to around a hundred people.

The menu changes with whichever kitchen is cooking — rice and curry, pizza, bread, fruit, water, juice. What doesn't change is that somebody hands you the plate and asks how you have been.

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Hot food, every Sunday. Rain or shine, holidays included.
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Restaurant partnerships. Local kitchens cook; volunteers collect and carry.
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Served person to person. No tickets, no forms, no questions asked.

Volunteers serving pizza, drinks and supplies from folding tables in the park

A volunteer beside stacks of rolled blankets ready to hand out

Blankets and essentials

A meal is not much use to someone who spent the night cold. Alongside the food we hand out blankets, jackets, socks and hygiene supplies — toothbrushes, soap, razors, water bottles.

More than five thousand items of clothing have crossed those tables since 2020, nearly all of it donated by families, companies and congregations around the Bay Area.

—
Warm layers in winter. Blankets, jackets, socks, gloves.
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Everyday necessities. The small things that are hardest to replace.
—
Community-sourced. Stocked by Bay Area families and organizations.

Young Leaders Forum

Students take on real parts of the Sunday operation — loading cars, setting up, serving, and talking with the people in line.

It is the difference between being told that people are struggling and standing across a table from someone who is.

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Youth on the line. Students serve directly, not from a distance.
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Workshops. Communication, leadership and public speaking.
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Peer mentorship. Older students bring younger ones along.

Teenage volunteers handing out water bottles and socks at the park

Four teenage volunteers at St. James Park before the service

Our Story

It started with about thirty people.

In 2012, a Fremont family kept noticing people sleeping on the streets of downtown San Jose and could not leave it there. The following Sunday they came back with food cooked at home, served lunch to around thirty people, and said they would return the next week.

They did. Then neighbors joined, and their children, and their children's friends. In October 2015 the effort became a registered 501(c)(3).

“Selfless service with compassion is joy.”
Printed on the banner at every service

The food now comes from partner restaurants rather than a home kitchen, and there are around a hundred volunteers instead of two. Almost nothing else has changed: same park, same morning, same promise to come back.

A volunteer and a child handing out bottled water at the park in the organization's earlier years — Earlier years at St. James Park

2012The first Sunday meal in downtown San Jose — about thirty people, cooked at home.

2015GOCS is granted federal 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status in October.

2020The volunteer coalition passes a hundred people, and the service runs straight through the pandemic.

TodayStill every Sunday at St. James Park. More than 25,000 meals served since 2020.

Volunteers serving food during the pandemic years — Through the pandemic years

A volunteer hands over water and a meal box in summer — Water and meals, summer

Winter clothing distribution at the park — Winter clothing

Volunteers handing out blankets on a clear cold morning — Blankets, cold morning

People

The organization is the volunteers.

GOCS has no employees. Everyone here does this around a job or around school, and has done for years.

GOCS volunteers gathered behind the organization's banner at St. James Park

Part of the volunteer coalition — St. James Park, San Jose

Directors

Eshan Gupta, Director of the Young Leaders Forum

How we run

No staff. No office. No overhead.

GOCS has never had a paid employee. What comes in goes out as food, blankets and supplies.

The organization

A registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Fremont, California, serving downtown San Jose and the wider Bay Area.

EIN · 47-5220339 Tax-exempt since · October 2015 Serving since · 2012

What it costs to run

Nothing is subtracted before the work. There are no salaries, no rent and no fundraising costs.

Paid staff · None Office rent · None Fundraising costs · None

A quiet moment at St. James Park during the weekly service

Get in touch

The table goes up again next Sunday.

We are fully resourced at the moment. The service is staffed by a standing coalition of more than a hundred volunteers, and it is funded. We are not seeking donations or new volunteers right now — if that changes, we will say so here.

The door is open all the same: for organizations exploring a partnership, for restaurants that want to help supply a Sunday, for press, or for anyone who wants to know more about the work.

Email us 510-378-0698

Global Organization for Community Services · 319 Harvard Common, Fremont, CA 94539

Every Sunday,we set the table.