Volunteers feed the hungry, homeless
Union Gospel Mission serves up its 29th annual Thanksgiving meal
Kevin Knight has a favour to ask.
When you drive past or walk by a homeless person, in the Downtown Eastside or wherever, please don’t assume they’re human garbage, living the life their decisions warrant, useless to society except as a drain on resources.
Knight knows better, better than pretty much anyone.
“I used to come to the Union Gospel Mission for a meal, I’d hide my face so no one would see me,” the 56-year-old said on Thanksgiving Monday.
“I was wheeling a shopping cart with the last of my belongs into the meal program.”
Knight, 11 years clean and sober as of Sept. 17, was volunteering as the UGM put on its 29th annual Thanksgiving meal, one of 130 volunteers serving 3,000 turkey dinners at the Mission’s facilities on Hastings and Princess.
Not only that, Knight and his wife have a ministry in Cambodia, where they’ve helped build a school and 93 homes for 160 children and their families who were left homeless after the government bulldozed their neighbourhood in Phnom Penh for developers. They dumped the families in a field 38 kilometres from the capital in the middle of the night.
Parents of a little girl who just turned two, they’ve also set up an aquaponics operation (a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics).
“We call it Manna4Life, we’re helping people who were violently evicted by their government,” Knight said.
It’s a world away from Knight’s dark days.
He was a tradesman making money and having fun, a guy who was a straight-A student at school and an athlete.
Then an experiment involving drugs and alcohol, and it all came crashing down. He lost his job, he lost his apartment. He was on the verge of even losing his roach-infested SRO because he couldn’t pay his back-rent. He felt powerless and didn’t know where to turn. “I used to have all the answers,” Knight said. “But I was at a point where I couldn’t keep a roof over my head.”
That’s when he was made aware of UGM’s Alcohol and Drug Recovery Program one day in 2007 during mealtime. His life changed instantly, he said.
“People saw him on the streets and discounted him, said he was getting what he deserved,” UGM’s Jeremy Hunka said. “No! He’s helping people around the world.
“These are human lives, don’t write them off.”
A lot of prep work goes into Thanksgiving meals, a UMG tradition begun in 1989 (its Christmas turkey dinner began in 1940). Donations pay for the food, which costs the Mission $3.29 a meal.
It takes five days to get everything ready. The turkeys are all sliced on Saturday, the stuffing prepared on Friday.
Eight chefs over two shifts are on it, plus making the 750 meals a day the Mission normally prepares.
“I have an extremely strong team,” kitchen manager Randy Spark said. “It’s hard work and we’re extremely busy, but we’ve been doing it a long time now.”
Dozens of volunteers are turned away at Thanksgiving (and Christmas), but the Mission urges anyone who’d like to help out at other times of the year, particularly in winter, to visit their volunteers website. Donations are always appreciated, as well.
Knight said the message he’d like to impart this weekend of giving thanks is don’t give up on people,
“Compassion actually means to suffer with (someone),” he said. “There are a lot of people in the Downtown Eastside who can really contribute to society if they got some help.
“When you see that guy walking down Hastings, dirty and selling his belongings, that was me.”