KITCHEN COMES TO THE RESCUE
Program supplies emergency food to the vulnerable
“This program saved our lives,” Trych Herbert says in an interview at Abundant Life Church’s Bread Basket after picking up fresh produce, canned goods and other groceries to feed her growing family.
The free food comes from the Community Kitchen Program of Calgary. The charity’s Spinz-ARound program supplies emergency food to 60 community organizations, like the church, which in turn distributes it to hungry Calgarians around the city every week.
Herbert’s family fell on hard times three years ago. She was undergoing cancer treatment when her husband lost his job and the bank foreclosed on their car. Then, out of the blue, they got custody of his twins, now eight. The couple were happy with their blended family, but it meant two extra mouths to feed in addition to Herbert’s 12-year-old son. The family was in crisis.
Through Spinz-A-Round, the Bread Basket run out of the southwest Calgary Baptist church helped the family with groceries and more.
“It fills in for lunches for the kids: the bread, the snacks, the vegetables. It tides us over until the next week. It’s not easy providing three lunches a day to the kids to take to school. It gets expensive,” says Herbert, a 37-year-old stay-athome mom whose cancer is now in remission. Her husband is currently out of work so they still rely on the program.
Spinz-A-Round is brilliantly simple. Founded in 1997 by Community Kitchen, it provides emergency food to vulnerable people experiencing food insecurity or hunger by rescuing items from grocers, farmers markets and other donors, items that would otherwise wind up in the landfill.
One of 12 recipients of the 2018 Calgary Herald Christmas Fund, Community Kitchen collects the food — immediately freezing, refrigerating or storing it — then quickly “spins” it around back into the community through a network of volunteers and charities.
An astonishing 1,061,934 pounds of food was rescued in 2017, says Sundae Nordin, Community Kitchen’s CEO. It went to feed 135,860 people in Calgary, including 64,800 adults, 54,743 children and 14,465 seniors.
Food waste happens because produce might have “a blemish or isn’t esthetically pleasing,” says Nordin. Canned goods might be dented or items are near or past their expiry date. “But it’s still beautiful, wonderful food. It is not garbage food.”
(Spinz-A-Round doesn’t accept prepared food from, say, restaurants and hotel kitchens. “We don’t know the date of when it was made and we want to be careful. We don’t want anyone to get sick.”)
Volunteer Beverley Wright has spearheaded Abundant Life Church’s Bread Basket program for more than 20 years. Every Tuesday, for about 50 weeks of the year, she and her husband Arnie Jack- son visit the Community Kitchen warehouse in northeast Calgary to pick up supplies for the 80 families (about 200 people) registered with the Bread Basket program. They bring it back to the church where a small army of volunteers arranges everything on long tables. On a recent Tuesday, there were frozen packets of chicken wieners, milk, bread, cabbages, avocados, apples, oranges and huge piles of beautiful bell peppers.
“It just breaks my heart when I see what might have been wasted and people are so hungry,” says Wright.
The variety and the quantity of food has improved tremendously in the past few years, she says. “When we started 20 years ago, all we got was bread.”
Meat is a new and welcome addition.
Nordin says she works constantly to get new partners to step up and donate, and she especially wants to be able to provide milk and eggs. “That’s protein for people.”
Community Kitchen plans to use its portion of the 2018 Christmas Fund to grow Spinz-A-Round.
“We’ve been seeing an increase in demand and we really need to focus on finding sustainable funding,” Nordin says. “The need is there. It touches and reaches so many people.”
Herbert says she has been deeply touched by it. Beyond the food, she loves how the program builds community and provides broad support. For example, someone who was moving out of province donated a car to Abundant Life’s Bread Basket. Wright and her husband asked if the Herbert family could use it; they gratefully accepted.
“The people with these programs reach above and beyond, and they need all the funding they can get,” Herbert says.