Most excellent: Marion-Polk Food Share's new Community Kitchen

Here's a program that will never have to kowtow and chant "We're Not Worthy:

Marion-Polk Food Share has a new facility for commercial cooking and culinary training.

The more than $500,000 community kitchen within the food share's northeast Salem warehouse was unveiled at a ribbon cutting Tuesday afternoon.

The food share, a part of the Oregon Food Bank statewide network, also will be able to prepare meals from the piles of fresh food donations, reducing waste, said Eileen DiCicco, food share development associate.

In the kitchen, volunteers will to learn how to prepare nutritious meals from scratch. They then can train the low-income and needy people served by the food share's more than 90 partner agencies, said food share president Ron Hays.

"I'm in the business of working myself out of a job, and part of that is building self-sufficiency in people," Hays said. . . .

There's also talk of connecting with Chemeketa Community College to create some type of post-prison skills training program, said Phil McCorkle, food share vice president of development . . . .