Mobile Loaves & Fishes (MLF) is a Christian social outreach ministry that has been empowering communities into a lifestyle of service with the homeless since 1998.
Founded in Austin, Texas, the organization serves its homeless neighbors through three core programs:
Truck Ministry
Through the support of thousands of volunteers, Mobile Loaves & Fishes food trucks hit the streets of Austin 7 nights a week, 365 days a year to provide food, clothing and other life-sustaining items to homeless men and women who are struggling to survive. With more than 6 million meals served, MLF has grown to become the largest prepared feeding program to the homeless in Central Texas and has spawned similar food truck programs in other cities across the country.
Community First! Village
As a result of the multitude of connections we’ve made with our homeless neighbors, we’ve learned that the single greatest cause of homelessness is a profound, catastrophic loss of family. It’s from this understanding that MLF’s vision emerged to build Community First! Village to welcome home our friends who had been pushed to the fringe of society.
Often referred to as the most talked about neighborhood in Austin, Community First! Village is a 51-acre master planned development that provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness.
Community Works
Realizing that most, if not all, of our neighbors who live in Community First! Village are quite entrepreneurial in nature, Mobile Loaves & Fishes developed the Community Works program to empower individuals to rediscover their God-given talents and move those talents into the economy.
Community Works provides opportunities for our friends who have experienced homelessness to earn a dignified income, while also developing new skills and cultivating enduring relationships.
More than two decades ago, Mobile Loaves & Fishes’ founders boldly answered God’s call to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Today we remain steadfast in this desire as we take part in an unprecedented movement and level of collaboration across Austin to ensure our homeless neighbors are not forgotten. Together, we are serving goodness and building hope for our friends who need it most.
Our Purpose & Vision
We empower communities into a lifestyle of service with the homeless.
Our Mission
We provide food and clothing, cultivate community and promote dignity to our homeless brothers and sisters in need.
- God, infinitely perfect and blessed in Himself, in a plan of sheer goodness, freely created man to make him share in His own blessed life.
- By virtue of being created by God in His image, we are all called to live in community and relationship with Him through each other.
- The family is the original cell of social life.
- You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
- All members of the human family are equal in dignity.
- The Lord God took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it. Gen.2:15
Goals
- Transform the way people view the stereotype of those who find themselves homeless
- To reconnect the homeless to self, family, and community
- Help the chronically homeless rediscover and utilize their God-given talents to do purposeful work
- To connect human to human, heart to heart through the fellowship of food and hospitality
- Inspire people into a lifestyle of abundance by giving their best first
MLF is committed to fostering a culture that prioritizes relational connection. We believe there is opportunity in every aspect of our work to be relational in a highly transactional world. In this culture, transactions are means to relational ends, not the other way around.
This begins with the countercultural love poured out by Jesus Christ and grows as imperfect individuals strive to show this love to each other human-to-human, heart-to-heart.
Each individual’s openness to the journey of their own personal growth is essential in building our relational culture, and we believe this culture flourishes as we each continuously strive to more fully embody these four core values:
- Faith: We define Faith as the foundational belief that our world and all our work belong to God. This allows us to engage our work with joy and lightheartedness, knowing that we are not ultimately in control.
- Humility: We define Humility as rightly viewing oneself as a single piece of a grander story. This humility leads to a view of oneself that is neither too high nor too low.
- Generous Spirit: We define a Generous Spirit as a readiness to give more grace, mercy, and hospitality than is necessary or expected. This posture allows us to see others for who they are, not what they do.
- Integrity: We define Integrity as a wholehearted commitment to doing right by God, ourselves, and others. This wholeheartedness shows itself in consistently choosing honesty, responsibility and ownership in all actions and decisions.
