The Squamish Helping Hands Society and generous local donors are feeding two birds with one bag of seeds by providing a food distribution service that minimizes waste and maximizes the number of people in Squamish receiving much-needed food.
"The food distribution program is where we go out to all the donors - Save-On-Foods, Nesters and Starbucks - and we collect the food that would otherwise go to waste," said Maureen Mackell, Helping Hands executive director.
"We bring it back to the shelter and re-package it to distribute to different community groups such as Castlerock, the Cedars and the Manor [seniors housing], the alternate school when it's running, Squamish Nation, HPOP [healthy pregnancy outreach program] and other programs in the community that require food."
Mackell said several other donors frequently drop off food for the program, and recently Helping Hands received two generous monetary donations.
The not-for-profit organization received $20,000 from the Squamish Savings Legacy Grant and a $1,000 from the Brackendale Farmers Institute.
"The donations will help us further develop the food distribution program, bring it to Phase 2," she said.
"So far the program has been done in-house but we're hiring a co-ordinator now to improve the program's efficiency and ideally expand the service to include more donors and more community groups."
Farmers Institute president Thor Froslev said he couldn't think of a worthier cause than providing a necessity to community members and groups in need.
"It's just incredible what these people are doing so how could we not support them?" asked Froslev.
Mackell said that some of the money would also go towards Helping Hands' own garden project where shelter users grow their own vegetables and herbs in planter beds.
She described the program as a win-win situation for everyone involved.
"The donors don't have a program where they can distribute their extra food, so they use us. We make it possible for everybody to have a win-win situation," Mackell said.
"The stores win because they're not wasting good food and putting so much into the landfill and the community wins because there are lots of people in our community who can't afford good fresh produce."
Stores generally donate excess food or food that is approaching its expiration date.
"We're managing to get that out really quickly - it turns around in a couple hours," said Mackell.
The volunteers are careful about where food can be distributed safely and for further development of the program, Helping Hands is partnering with Squamish Climate Action Network community farm and the Squamish Farmers' Market Association, she said.
