Feeding the Hungry: One Soup Bowl at a Time by Kevin Miller

Looking for a meaningful volunteer opportunity that will allow you to make new friends while earning a great return on your time? Then check out the Fraser Valley Gleaners Society (FVG), an Abbotsford-based, non-profit organization dedicated to sharing God’s compassion for the poor by addressing their need for food.

      God has blessed Canadians with an abundant food supply. However, much of this food is either thrown away or left unharvested because it is unfit for today’s discriminating consumers. Rather than allow the excess food to go to waste, FVG takes the produce off the growers’ hands, dries it, and packages it as a soup mix. This soup mix is then packed into barrels and made available to various international aid organizations, such as the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), that distribute it to the needy overseas. Through this process, FVG helps to alleviate both waste and need, making them one of the most financially responsible and environmentally sensitive organizations around.

      Since FVG opened their new, 7,600 square foot facility in September 2001, the organization has produced over one million servings of soup. Their goal is to produce over three million servings of soup in 2002.

      FVG survives solely on donations and volunteer help. Their facility contains a commercial food dehydrator that can dry up to 1,200 kilograms of produce a day. However, everything else in the process is done by hand—volunteer hands. This includes harvesting the produce, washing and preparing it for drying, and packaging it into bags and barrels. The work is not difficult, and it does not require specialized skills: only able hands and willing hearts. That’s where people like you come in.

      According to FVG Treasurer Jack Friesen, 95 percent of FVG’s volunteers are seniors. Seniors make ideal volunteers, he says, because they have time on their hands, and they’re looking for opportunities to socialize while doing something meaningful to help the poor.       Friesen, who is a retired BC Hydro employee, was drawn to the organization for precisely these reasons.

      “If you’re retired and you don’t have a hobby, what do you do?” He says.

      Apart from the fun working environment, Friesen says the best part about helping out at FVG is the sense of satisfaction you get that what you’re doing is really making a difference. FVG calculates that one hour of volunteer time generates the equivalent of 120 servings of food. Not a bad return on the time you invest!

      As Friesen says, “We know we can’t feed everyone, but we can feed one person at a time—or one hundred and twenty an hour!”

            If you’re interested in learning more about how you can get involved with the Fraser Valley Gleaners Society, visit their web site at www.fvgleaners.org or call them at 1-866-772-7070. You may also want to contact their sister organization, Okanagan Gleaners Society at 250-498-8859 or john_martens@telus.net.