(This is the first in a series highlighting the recipients of the 2026 Inspiring Women Awards. Read more about the awards here.)
The Rev. Pernell Rutledge knows what it’s like to be down on her luck.
More than 20 years ago, she’d moved to Augusta with her husband and four small children. After her husband left, she and her children, who were between the ages of four and seven, found themselves homeless and living out of her car for about four months.
“I was just working two days a week at a convenience store, so I couldn’t afford the rent where we were living,” said Rutledge, who received the Inspiring: Giving award. “I ended up getting put out. Everything I had was outside on the street.”
During that time, they ate a lot of sandwiches, used the convenience store bathroom for showers and did the best they could.
“The kids – they were o.k. They were real good kids,” she said.
She met a man who had a home he was renovating, and he let her stay in the home until she could get back on her feet.
“From that day forward when we were there, I always told God ‘Lord, if you get me out of this. I will always go back and help someone else,’” she said.
Around 2013, she started Pernell’s House of Plenty Enough (HOPE) Ministry to make sure people had plenty enough to eat.
“I was kind of discouraged with the sandwiches, which is what we had most of the time,” she said. “So my focus is hot food. Homeless people are less fortunate people. People give them sandwiches, and that’s good. Not being unappreciative, but I know how it is when you’ve got small children and want a hot meal.”
Not only is the food she cooks hot, she specializes in what some people might call comfort food.
“I’m a soul food cooker. Anything soul food I like,” she said.
Chicken, pork, cabbage and collard greens are among the dishes she likes to cook.
“The same thing I cook at home,” she said. “And that was my philosophy. That I wanted to treat somebody or give someone what I had.”
Rutledge has taken her ministry and partnered with groups such as GAP Ministries and the health department at pop-up events providing homecooked hot meals; she serves meals the third Saturday of the month at Dyess Park; and volunteers with her church Harmony Baptist Church, which is in the process of developing its own soup kitchen.
She also makes sure her neighbors have enough to eat — especially the elderly ones.
“I still go around the neighborhood and feed elderly people and the homeless in that area,” she said.
And people know where to go if they are hungry.
“I’m always cooking more than I need because I know someone is going to come and knock on the door and ask, ‘Do you have anything in there?’” she said.
Rutledge has always cooked for a lot of people. She learned how to cook when she was only 8 years old for a family of 11.
“I always cooked an army. And then I got two boys that ate like an army,” she said.
For many years, she had a partner helping her. Her husband, Duane, was a professional cook and he made meals alongside her. He was killed in a hit-and-run incident in January 2025.
She’s also had assistance from her daughter.
“She makes a mean chicken,” she said.
Despite missing her husband, Rutledge continues to do the work she promised God.
“They say the poor are going to be among us forever. And so, we’ve got to be a help. I love praying and I believe in the power of prayer. But I feel like when God brings people to you, he always knows how he wants you to help them,” she said.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. She’s won multiple Georgia Press Association awards, is the recipient of the 2018 Greater Augusta Arts Council’s media award and was named best local writer by readers of Augusta Magazine in 2024 and 2025. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here
