It's early evening when the knock on the door distracts Helen Gross from her knitting. The 91-year-old peers through the peephole to see a tattooed, pierced teenager, her cap adorned with spikes and coat opened just enough to reveal the words on the T-shirt: "I am part of the axis of evil."

The 91-year-old, her hands trembling, slides off the chain, fumbles with the deadbolt, and eases the door open.

"Hello, dear," Mrs. Gross says with a big smile.

Phoebe-Morgana Tallman, 17, responds in kind. Then she wipes her feet, and accepts the offer to come in. Despite her punkish look, the teenager is polite and charming, making small talk as she unzips her bag and extracts a freshly cooked delicious-smelling supper.

Ms. Tallman is a volunteer with Santropol Roulant, a youth-run Meals-on-Wheels service in Montreal. She will deliver a dozen or more meals daily, travelling by bicycle, bus or car, and shattering all kinds of stereotypes along the way.

"Appearance-wise, I can be a bit threatening, I guess. But I'm not really a horrible person," she says sardonically. "My world doesn't revolve around drugs or hooliganism or shopping or TV, but there's no way of really finding that out unless you actually talk to me."

Mrs. Gross does so routinely. In fact, for a frail senior who doesn't get out much, particularly in the wintry holiday season, Santropol Roulant volunteers are her main connection to the outside world. They deliver not only food, but friendship.

"We read all kinds of ridiculous things in the newspaper about young people in the newspaper and they're not true. These kids are involved in everything. If you sit down and talk to them you realize they're wonderful," she says.

Ms. Tallman is equally charmed by the grandmotherly Mrs. Gross. "Helen is very cool," she says, admiring the older woman's vast knowledge and her fierce sense of independence. Inspired by her clients, and the way they have overcome adversity, Ms. Tallman wants to attend medical school, and work with an international aid group such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

Vanessa Reid, the ebullient executive director of Santropol Roulant, marvels constantly at the burgeoning of these unlikely relationships between young volunteers and old clients. "Our belief is that a social service -- in this case delivery of food -- can be more than a service, it can build community and be a catalyst for social change."

Ms. Reid says that, as society becomes more urbanized and traditional family ties break down, people are looking to create new forms of community that make them feel connected. "These relationships that develop are real, they are non-obligatory; there is no financial or familial obligation but people still open their doors to people they would not otherwise know," she says. "We are creating another kind of family."

That applies equally to volunteers and clients who, interestingly, are both marginalized. Santropol Roulant appeals to volunteers, such as Ms. Tallman, who want to get involved but feel spurned by traditional charities. And it caters to people such as Mrs. Gross, who live on the margins of the health- and social-services safety net: Too well to need care, just well-off enough to not need a food bank, but nonetheless isolated.

Clients of Santropol Roulant pay $3.50 a meal, and the meals are delivered up to six days a week. The food is made fresh daily in the group's kitchen. On this day, the cooking and packaging of 80 meals of pineapple ham, potatoes, salad and apple crisp (with fruit salad and spanakopita for diabetics and vegetarians) is being overseen by Nadira Ramharry. At 23, she already has six years of experience as a volunteer, and keeps coming back because, she says, the energetic atmosphere is addictive.

"This is real life. This is what we should all be doing to make our communities better places to live," Ms. Ramharry says.

An hour after she has put the finishing touches on the last meal, Joyce Smith McCoy is sliding it into her oven to reheat. While she is doing so, Ms. Tallman is standing on a chair, changing a light bulb and fielding a barrage of questions.

Ms. McCoy, a schizophrenic who also suffers from diabetes and has trouble seeing because she is awaiting cataract surgery, says that without the daily food delivery, she probably wouldn't eat at all.

"To shop, to prepare it, to cook, it's all too much for me," she says. "Thank God for these kids. They're so full of life."

Santropol Roulant's offices are always bursting with activity, much of it related to making ends meet. The group has an annual budget of about $400,000 but no permanent funding. It cobbles together the money from a combination of government grants (most related to job training for young people), handouts from charitable foundations and fundraising events such as bazaars and sidewalk sales.

"A lot of charitable groups do their fundraising in the shadows, but we do it right here in the front room," says Brian McFarlane, the director of fundraising and one of only four employees. "Like everything else Santropol Roulant does, fundraising is a way of community-building, not just a way of raising money."

A recent fondue dinner was modelled after the wacky TV program The Gong Show. There was an intergenerational, multicultural picnic in the park near the offices, a sidewalk sale and a bazaar. There are also T-shirts and cookbooks for sale, and people who see the Santropol Roulant bikes in the neighbourhood sometimes drop in with a cheque.

Mr. McFarlane says that, contrary to popular belief, young people are very generous with their money and their time. The other knock against youth-oriented charities is that they are transient, but after seven years and almost 200,000 meals delivered, Santropol Roulant has defied that stereotype too.

For George Jeary, a long-time client of Santropol Roulant, none of that matters. Racked by emphysema and left breathless by a short walk to the door, he says the bittersweet daily delivery of food has become his only connection to the outside world.

"This is all I have left," he says without a hint of rancour. "I'm all by my lonesome. If it wasn't for these kids . . . ."