Fundraising efforts for Foodgrains Bank celebrated in Swift Current

ive a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he feeds his family for a lifetime.”

Saskatchewan Foodgrains Bank Coordinator Dave Meier offers that quote when explaining the mandate for his organization. “The Foodgrains Bank is a Christian response to hunger – it’s a food aid and development organization. We do water projects, water sand dams, water wells, and irrigation projects in Third World countries. We started out just providing food, as just a food aid organization, but then it quickly went to the way it is now – to sustain these countries over time,” says Meier.

Fundraising efforts for the Foodgrains Bank in Swift Current and Stewart Valley have been spearheaded by John Wright and Troy Laforge.

“We’ve got two projects – one is the Lone Tree Project at John and Pam Wright’s farm in Swift Current, and the other is in Stewart Valley on Bruce and Bettina Pate’s land. Basically, we raise crops each year, and the net proceeds all go to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank as donations.”

The event’s guest speaker was Roxana Tiefenbach. Hailing from Leader, the group enlisted Tiefenbach to discuss her food study tour of Kenya and Rwanda in November-December 2012.

Tiefenbach says she wasn’t prepared for the number of similarities between our culture and the African one.

“In some respects, I’ve often said when you travel, you are surprised about what’s the same, and you’re surprised about what’s different, and you never know when you’re going to encounter those same things. So there were peo- ple there who were trying to feed their families, and send their children to school and do ordinary things just like we do. Then I ran into someone talking about the PTA and I thought, ‘ The PTA? In the middle of Kenya!’ But for things that are totally different; they have to deal with wild animals that trample their fields. We may have deer – but that’s not quite the same as elephants.”

Meier, who’s been the Saskatchewan Coordinator of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank for 12 years, says that about half the funds for the organization that are raised are from community growing projects such as the ones in Swift Current and Stewart Valley. In Saskatchewan, approximately $2 million was raised last year, and 70 per cent of that figure was raised through community growing projects.