# Batavia This Week — Community Helper edition **Mums, Meals, and a Mystery Card** Week of September 7 – September 13, 2026 · ~809 words · ~5.4 min read aloud --- Eight in the morning at Apple Villa, a room full of Batavians is already at work. Every Tuesday, same time, same place. Volunteering, awarding grants, delivering meals, tending pollinator gardens. Nobody's filming it. It just gets done. Welcome to Batavia This Week, the Community Helper edition. Here's the thread this week. Almost every way to help in this town comes down to walking through a door at a specific time. Not a pledge, not a plan. A door, a time, and you. So let's find the doors. [beat] Start Monday with the easiest one there is. Batavia Moose Lodge number six eighty-two hosts Comfort Food Monday at five in the evening at fifteen thirty-five South Batavia Avenue. The lodge has been gathering neighbors around shared tables since nineteen eleven, and those tables fund scholarships and support Mooseheart and Moosehaven. Eating dinner somewhere is a small thing. Eating dinner there does a little more than fill you up. And if you're already a member, the Lodge General Meeting follows at seven that same evening, first and third Mondays, all current members welcome. Tuesday morning, that Rotary room I mentioned has a speaker. It's the twenty twenty-six Car Raffle presentation, eight in the morning at Apple Villa on West Wilson. This is the meeting where a fundraiser stops being an idea and turns into tickets somebody has to actually sell. If you've ever wondered how Rotary funds the grants and the gardens, this is that conversation, out loud, over breakfast. [beat] Thursday is the one I'd circle. The Elderday Center holds its Annual Mum Sale starting at nine in the morning, at Elderday Center Central on West Wilson Street here in Batavia, and also at their north location on Parkway Avenue in Elgin. Elderday gives seniors living with dementia a structured day with real purpose. Memory care, exercise, nutrition, caregiver support, all under registered nurse oversight. So when you buy mums for your front steps, you're funding that. Buy two. Give one to a neighbor. And if Thursday morning doesn't work, Elderday keeps going. Friday at two in the afternoon they hold an open house during the mum sale, and it's free. Live entertainment starts at three. If you've got a family member you're quietly worrying about, that open house is the low-pressure way to see the place with your own eyes. [beat] Friday, the Batavia Rotary Club runs Meals on Wheels out of the United Methodist Church. Meals go out, doors get knocked on, somebody who hasn't talked to anyone all day gets a face and a hello. If you've been meaning to volunteer for something and haven't picked it yet, pick this one. Ask Rotary how to get on the route. Friday evening splits two beautiful ways. At six, Water Street Studios opens Second Fridays in the Arts District with their seventeenth anniversary show. Free to attend, donations appreciated, and they'll point you toward their neighbors at Kiss the Sky and Warehouse fifty-five. Seventeen years of kids in Saturday classes and resident artists under one roof. Drop something in the donation box on your way past the front desk. [beat] And then there's Bulldog Stadium. Batavia High School varsity football hosts Lake Park, sophomores at four thirty, varsity kickoff at seven. Tickets through GoFan, broadcast on HUDL or BATV. You already knew about the game. Here's what you might not know. It's Difference Maker Night, and everyone who walks in the gate gets a free trading card of a mystery Bulldog. Students hand them out at the gates. The card doesn't give a name. It just asks, who is number eighty-nine? He was a Batavia receiver in the early nineteen-eighties who never really left, and he's been on a Bulldog sideline most Friday nights for thirty years. You scan the code on the back to find out who. It's card three of a ten-card set, and right now it's the only card that exists. They're expecting two to four thousand people. Come early, get the card, and try to guess before the person standing next to you does. [beat] Saturday, one more door, and it's outside town. Little Brothers, Friends of the Elderly, holds its monthly Birthday Party at noon at their Chicago office on North Ashland Avenue. Older adults born this month gather with volunteers and staff to celebrate. Since nineteen fifty-nine, this group has paired volunteers with adults seventy and older who might otherwise spend the day alone. All of it free of charge. A birthday nobody attends is a hard thing. Be the attendance. Sunday, if you want a quiet start, Batavia United Methodist Church holds worship at nine in the morning in the sanctuary and online. That's the week. Buy a mum, carry a meal, take a card, sing to a stranger. The full list is always at bataviail.co. This has been Batavia This Week. --- ## Fact sheet for the reader (verify anything you say beyond this) - **Comfort Food Monday** — Mon Sep 7, 5 PM · Batavia Moose Lodge #682 · 1535 S. Batavia Avenue, Batavia - **Speaker: 2026 Car Raffle** — Tue Sep 8, 8 AM · Batavia Rotary Club · Apple Villa, 1961 W Wilson, Batavia, IL 60510 - **Annual Mum Sale** — Thu Sep 10, 9 AM · Elderday Center, Inc. · Elderday Center-Central, 328 W Wilson St, Batavia, IL 60510 and Elderday Center-North, 865 Parkway Ave, Elgin, IL 60120 - **Meals on Wheels** — Fri Sep 11 · Batavia Rotary Club · United Methodist Church - **Second Fridays in the Arts District** — Fri Sep 11, 6 PM · Water Street Studios · Water Street Studios · Free - **Bulldogs Football vs Lake Park** — Fri Sep 11, 7 PM · Batavia Bulldogs Football · Bulldog Stadium, Batavia High School, Batavia, IL - **Birthday Party** — Sat Sep 12, 12 PM · Little Brothers - Friends of the Elderly · LBFE Chicago office, 355 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, Illinois