Prairie Gleaners still offering support around the world

The Prairie Gleaners Society in southeast Alberta hasn’t let a pandemic prevent it from making an impact – if anything it’s only made those efforts more important.

The local charity recently filled a request to send a 40-foot shipping container packed with locally-sourced dehydrated soup mix to Zambia through Dynamic Churches International and Saskatoon’s Bare Foot Ministries.

After receiving the request in early April, Prairie Gleaners loaded up the container with 11,988 bags of soup mix, weighing a whopping 21,100 kilograms, and shipped it out of Medicine Hat to Calgary on May 7, according to a release. From Calgary, the container travelled by rail to Halifax before making the trip to Zambia by sea.

“In spite of the challenges we face here with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is rather exciting to see vegetables grown here in southern Alberta feeding people in Africa,” reads the release. “We, the board of the Gleaners, will be busy bagging our dehydrated vegetable mix as we have a possibility of needing a 20-foot sea container for another couple of organizations.”

The initiative is the second time in the past several months that Prairie Gleaners Society has shipped a container to a population in need. In October, the group partnered with Global Emergency Missions Society to send a 20-foot container of dehydrated soup mix to Guazacapan, Guatemala.

The Prairie Gleaners Society remains closed to the public until at least June 1.

File photo Roy Hjelte dumps diced vegetables onto the table as Steve Mower moves some onto a tray before it gets put in the dehydrator (seen in the background).