It’s always a busy day for the Red Deer and District Food Bank and with three fundraising events on April 22, the activity around the warehouse is a little more hectic, but as always, organized.
“Donation patterns have shifted,” says Fred Scaife, executive director of the Red Deer and District Food Bank during a tour. “We’ve found in the last 10 years that donors want to know the accountability of the organization. They want to see organizations ‘doing for themselves’.”
Scaife hopes that one of the food bank’s new proposed ideas, a ‘community kitchen’ of sorts where clients can take cooking classes, will allow the food bank to keep up its social enterprise approach.
“I know, from an internal study and personal experience the majority of our clients don’t know how to cook. We can teach clients and extend their purchasing power within the community,” he says while showing off the bay that will one day hopefully be the home of the kitchen.
“We’ll have a cooking line, prep area just like a regular commercial kitchen. We will have a classroom area so we can sort and package the stuff they have made. Much like they do with community kitchens where they go and cook stuff, divide it up and freeze it.”
Plans for the kitchen space are just beginning and there is no set date for when it will be open but until then Scaife and the volunteers at the food bank will be busy within the community.
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There are three events for the food bank going on on April 22.
- Helping Hands Mormon Food Drive; Residents in the city that live south of Ross Street and in West Park will start seeing bags on their front step the week of April 10. Residents are invited to fill the bag with non-perishable food items and have it ready for pick up on April 22.
- Stuff-a-Tent; There will be a local boy scout at the north Save-On-Foods, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. collecting donations as part of his service project. His goal is to ‘stuff a tent’ with non perishable donations for the Red Deer Food Bank.
- AMA Shred Event; The barbecue will be fired up at 11 a.m. and the food bank will be accepting donations in the AMA parking lot, in Southpointe Common.