Now I know what club I’m going to next time I’m in Toronto. The El Mocambo Tav­ern oper­ates as a fund raiser for the area’s home­less. The pro­ceeds from the drinks, food and cover at the bar goes to food and shel­ter for the city’s homeless.

From the Toronto Star, writ­ers Craig and Marc Kiel­burger describe a typ­i­cal night at the El Mocambo.

In the base­ment of the El Mocambo Tav­ern, Abbas Jahangiri leads a team of vol­un­teers in prayer.

A floor up, his staff is busy. Bar­tenders stock the fridge with fresh beer and clear away cases of emp­ties from the pre­vi­ous night. An indie band unloads gear under the neon palm tree mark­ing the his­toric entrance of the music hall where the Rolling Stones and Elvis Costello once played.

Down the stairs past rows of canned goods, vol­un­teers bow their heads among deli meats and chopped toma­toes that will soon become sand­wiches for the home­less. Jahangiri asks God to bless the food, the poor­est of the poor and those suf­fer­ing in “Dar­fur, Dar­fur, Darfur.”

In just a few hours, a typ­i­cal night will begin at this less-than-typical bar. By mak­ing sand­wiches, pour­ing drinks and play­ing music, every­one who enters the El Mocambo’s doors works towards the same cause: charity.

“We have about 100 vol­un­teers who come here at dif­fer­ent times, after they fin­ish work. It’s such a right­eous act,” explains Jahangiri. “This place has such a unique cul­ture. It’s a land­mark for cul­ture. I wanted to use the name and the music to push for charity.”

This is no “church base­ment” vol­un­teer group. Instead, the Toronto music hall works for the vol­un­teers. At the end of the night, when bands pack up and tabs are set­tled, all of the venue’s prof­its go straight to work as Jahangiri locks his club and takes the sand­wiches to the city’s homeless.

The vol­un­teers are part of Jahangiri’s ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion, Serv­ing Char­ity. They, along with the venue’s bar­tenders and bands, are inte­gral to fund­ing the group’s activ­i­ties. That includes sand­wiches for the home­less in Canada, as well as projects in Viet­nam, India and the Domini­can Republic.

“Every­thing Serv­ing Char­ity does is picked up by the El Mocambo,” says Jahangiri. “In that way, we use the aspects of music and fame and finance and turn it into some­thing for charity.”

The shows are like small-scale ver­sions of U2’s 360° tour. Both band and bar­man del­i­cately mix social mes­sage with music to cre­ate pos­i­tive social change. Socially-conscious lyrics can usu­ally be heard from the street and the space is often donated to char­i­ties for fundrais­ers. Patrons also get a dis­count on the cover charge for donat­ing canned goods.

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