Tutti-frutti, a guitar and building Social Capital

Our youth at the Shalom church have been making lots of tutti-frutti lately. Tutti-frutti is made from all kinds of fruit such as watermelon, papaya, cantaloupe, banana, mango, etc. which is cut into small pieces. It is best served in a Popsicle made from Kool-Aid frozen in a plastic cup with a stick.

Social capital is the result of building relationships among people. It can be between individuals, families, communities or in this case a church congregation whose members spend time with each other.

One of the first things a new church congregation purchases is a guitar. The reason that our youth have been making tutti-frutti is to sell the popsicles in order to raises funds to purchase a guitar for the new church. Most of the young people do not have jobs and are in school. In the early stages of growth, the new congregation did not have a budget for purchasing a guitar. It was exciting to see the youth use the guitar for the first time in our devotional on Wednesday. They know that they are doing their own part, but the purchase of the guitar is only a part of the benefit of making and selling tutti-frutti.

A side benefit of the tutti-frutti production is the time that the youth spend learning to work together. The youth would divide up the responsibilities of gathering the fruit. Needless to say, our mango trees at the clinic made a valuable contribution. Once all the materials were collected the youth would gather to prepare the ingredients, fill the cups, place them in the freezer, and clean up Angie’s kitchen. A low sugar variety is made for diabetics.

Additional social capital is built when the tutti-frutti is brought out for selling to our congregation. Our congregation is notable in that people can be found standing around visiting for 45 minutes after services. Maybe tutti-frutti has something to do with that.