What started out as a way to give back to celebrate her 50th birthday has now morphed into a community-wide effort to spread some love – and a little lunch to those on the Downtown Eastside.
Ladner’s Carol Lee turned 50 four years ago and rather than celebrating with friends over a birthday lunch, she decided to give back.
“I really didn’t know how to go about it, but I just thought why do another lunch… let’s feed the homeless,” she recalled. “We started out with about 100 lunches. My husband Stephen funded everything for my birthday.”
The next year it turned into 300 lunches and the community involvement grew.
“My friend Kathy Isaak from the Delta School District told me of classes of students designing these cool, paper lunch bags over at Hawthorne,” said Lee. “I was a parent at Hawthorne for 16 years, so I was happy to get them involved.”
The third year the DTES lunch project expanded to 500 lunches with the whole school designing the bags. This year that number ballooned to 553 lunches.
Right after Halloween Lee turned to social media and the Ladner’s Landing Facebook group seeking donations of leftover candy to add a sweet treat to the lunch bags.
She received more than 2,000 pieces of candy.
Save-On-Foods provided bananas at cost, while Cobs Bread provided a bread donation that covered all the sandwiches. Other cash donations from friends helped pay for the lunch bags, plastic sandwich baggies, peanut butter, jam, bananas and bottles of water.
“We always come back with stories after we deliver everything. I think living here in Ladner we are so sheltered here from the stuff that is going on in the Downtown Eastside,” she said. “These are someone’s kids, brothers, sons and daughters, so we like to go down and connect with these people. We have no agenda, just hand out some sandwiches.”
Lee is quick to point out that it takes a village for this project to work.
“This is really about the people who help me. I organized it and my husband funds what we don’t get donated. I don’t do this for recognition. To tell you the truth, out of the 1,500 sandwiches we have made in four years, I have not made one. It’s amazing these women who come and they just want to help,” she said.
This year's sandwich makers and lunch delivery crew included: Susan Elliot, Patricia Sibley, Melinda and Angie Jansen, Denise Foster, Kristin Andersen, Doreen Van Ryk, Anne Wong, Caren Nicholson, Hannah Lee and Jo-Anne McConkey.
