Undercurrent helps business feed students
Community support across municipal lines in Nova Scotia
GLACE BAY — Dave Sawler is happy to give advice on ways to help people dealing with poverty and food insecurity.
And Dan Corbett, co-owner of D& E Smoked Meat sin Amherst, was happy he could pick Sawler’s brain for ways to expand their initiative to help feed seniors and students in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was happy to hear someone else was doing something when he called,” said Sawler, founder of Undercurrent Youth Centre in Glace Bay and Sydney.
D& E Smoked Meats isn’t a non-profit organization like Undercurrent Youth Centres. The commercial kitchen opened two years ago and they specialize in homemade meals. They make their own sausages, bacon and other smoked meats.
Corbett said him and his partner Elizabeth Soloway has planned to help feed those in need the third year they were in business. However, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 forced them to start their initiative earlier.
The Victorian Order of Nurses in Amherst reached out to D& E Smoked Meats more than a month ago to help provide food for their meals on wheels program because the hospital kitchen couldn’t due to COVID-19 health protection orders.
At the time it was 20-25 meals per day but Corbett thought seniors outside of the meals on wheels program would want the service.
They advertised meals to these seniors at the same $7.50 cost as meals on wheels and the daily number doubled. Now they are serving 200 meals to seniors each week.
Then customers who were teachers started telling Corbett and Soloway how they worried about some students dealing with food insecurity.
Corbett said they enlisted Maggie’s Place Family Resource Centre to help locate families in need.
“When we took that hint to test it, the community responded by funding for their neighbours,” said Corbett. “If it’s important to them, it’s important to us so we kept going.”
Along with private donors, organizations like the Cumberland Health Care Foundation and United Way, provided funding and now D & E is providing 180 meals each week to students in need. However, there could be as many as 450 students in need of meals throughout Cumberland County.
Knowing they needed to increase funding to feed more people, Corbett reached out to Sawler after reading an article in the Cape Breton Post about the provincial government’s virtual school lunch program pilot, which Undercurrent is operating.
Sawler provided insight on identifying students in need and understanding how different households have varying needs, with some needing grocery vouchers while others need prepared meals.
Based on Sawler’s recommendations, Corbett created a group of non-profit organizations, government agencies and politicians to work on a strategic approach to continue the program.
“His experience was certainly very useful,” said Corbett. “It is important to our customer base that no one goes unfed and thanks to the kindness of our community, they are helping feed their neighbours.
"The community is literally hugging each other with food right now.”
On May 8, Corbett received an email regarding the program expanding to cover all of Cumberland County — something they are happy to do but know they’ll need more corporate sponsors to make this happen.
To date, D & E Smoked Meats has provided more than 1,400 meals to seniors and students in need and Corbett thinks their daily numbers could at least double with enough donations.
“People are stepping up to help each other,” Corbett said. “It’s incredible.”