Food on the Corner just finished 36 years of continuous service, feeding and caring for the needy and homeless folks in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.
We are a 100 per cent volunteer organization. For this reason, I would like to express a big thank you to all our faithful helpers.
Our soup makers have provided a lot of soup again in the past year. On a regular Saturday we serve between 15 and 20 gallons of soup which adds up to a lot of soup in one year. We are very grateful for each soup maker. And our sandwich makers create between 200 and 400 sandwiches each and every week.
What is amazing is that some of the sandwiches are made by youth groups, students, seniors at our local seniors’ homes, and by friends getting together on a Friday evening. Instead of playing games, they create some of the tastiest sandwiches.
Then on Saturday morning, a team is busy loading all the necessary items making sure all that is needed to serve lunch is on board. On Saturday morning our truck is located at the parking lot behind Joe’s Market near Thrifty Foods awaiting the volunteers, sandwiches, bananas, soup and coffee.
By the way, I also would like to say a big thank you to the folks at Thrifty Foods and Save-On-Foods as well as Safeway in Ladner for their big contribution of bread and sweets each week.
When all this is loaded on our truck, we form a circle to say a word of blessing and, by 10 a.m., the team heads for Vancouver. Lunch is served from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in front of the provincial courthouse, which gets a good cleaning up afterwards, so that on Monday regular business can carry on.
After the clean up our truck still has goodies which we then deliver to some homeless shelters on the Downtown Eastside to people who really appreciate whatever we give them. To the folks downtown, we are a vital ministry and it’s all done by volunteers. It takes a lot of hands doing all this.
So is it worth it? Talk to the many folks that come and see their happy faces. We’re looking forward to another year, our 37th it will be, and we’ll again require a lot of help, a lot of soup and many hours of helping the needy, helping them live towards a better lifestyle.
Here is an opportunity for young or old to help those folks out of their predicament. We are a non-profit organization, so please visit our website at www.foodonthecorner.ca.
Hermann Glockl
Food on the Corner
