Young adults from nine nations chopped and seasoned food, served on the chow line, cleaned up and even provided a little music Thursday when Up with People cast members did a turn at the local free-lunch kitchen, Rebecca's Café.

"We try to do as much as we can for the community that we visit," said Arndt Saalfeldt, from Denmark. "So we try to incorporate all the helping hands we can to do stuff like we do here, to help people, to help prepare the meal. We do everything from gardening to painting."

Saalfeldt, a tall, bearded 23-year-old who looks as if he could lift heavy objects, was wearing an apron. He had helped prepare the food and was now ready to wash dishes. Earlier this week, he was one of the cast members who taught songs and melodies from various countries to children at Sallie Zetterower Elementary School.

Founded in 1965, Up with People provides people ages 17 to 29 opportunities to travel, perform on stage and learn about cultures and communities through service experiences and from host families. Cast members pay tuition and are referred to as students.

"To change the world," Saalfeldt said. "That's what we want to do, like, to show about being more humane, basically to teach world peace."

When they introduced themselves to the 100-plus Statesboro people lining up for lunch at Rebecca's, the Up with People players announced their first names and home nations. They hailed from Belgium, China, Denmark, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. The U.S. contingent included performers from California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Yet these were only a sample of the traveling company visiting Statesboro this week. The Up with People cast and crew include more than 100 people from 20 countries.

For the café crowd, Emily Mongeon, 19, from Farmington, Connecticut, helped sing "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay, while Giovanni De Leon, 18, from San Francisco, played guitar.

Mongeon also had her ukulele along but then took a turn greeting hungry folks at the check-in table. Earlier, in the kitchen, she and other cast members had chopped vegetables and also made a mix of spices they used to season the slabs of ribs.

"It's going to taste really awesome," Mongeon said. "I haven't tried it yet, but it's going to be awesome."

Rebecca's Café operates year-round, serving lunches to people in need on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the cafeteria of the former Julia P. Bryant Elementary School. Now officially part of the of the Food Bank Inc., whose offices are next door, the hot-lunch program still relies on volunteers from 10 participating organizations, many of them churches.

Ideally, 15 to 18 volunteers are needed to feed the 120 to 135 people who typically come to eat, said Jim Bastarache, Rebecca's Café operations manager.

The church in the regular rotation for Thursday did not have enough volunteers available, so Up with People came at an opportune time, he said. Bastarache had arranged things with a member of the organization's advance staff a few weeks ago.

"She told me what they do and that they look for service projects and so forth, and I said, 'Well, I have something that might work rather well,' and we just kind of put it together, and it's been great," he said.

One paid Up with People staff member, cast manager Joris van Doorslaer, a Belgian, was part of the international crew at Rebecca's Cafe. He is now 28, and this is the ninth cast with which he has toured.

"All of our staff members also join in on the volunteer work throughout the week, and we're there to support the group in all the different aspects that we do," he said.

Other groups of cast and staff members were doing service and outreach Thursday at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and the current Julia P. Bryant Elementary School, van Doorslaer said. Still others were setting up the stage in the Statesboro High School auditorium for tonight's show.

Showtime is 7 p.m. for Up with People's one Statesboro public performance of its 50th anniversary traveling show, "The Journey." Tickets, $15 for adults and $10 for students, are available through the Averitt Center for the Arts and at the door.

Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.