By Caroline Cox
On average in a year at the Shepherds of Good Hope we have 92 people for breakfast, 212 for lunch, 130 for dinner and over 200 for our community drop-in meal service. However, this past Saturday we had 150 people for breakfast, 270 for lunch, 170 for dinner and over 200 for our community drop-in services; almost 800 meals served out of our downtown shelter’s soup kitchen in one day. We also provide three meals a day to our 225 residents in four supportive housing buildings across the city, with a fifth under construction. We currently spend almost $400,000 on groceries in a year across our different programs. There are a lot of people in our community in need of a meal and Shepherds of Good Hope does its best to meet that need.
How does all that food get to all those people, in all those places?
A lot of it comes via our loyal and hardworking truck, known as “Rusty Ruby”, who is on the road five days a week to pick up food from across the city and deliver it to all of our programs. On average, Rusty Ruby does about eight to ten stops a day across the city, travelling approximately 60 kms a day.
Ed has been driving our truck for three years now. Spending a day with Ed on the truck taught me a couple of things. First of all, Ed works hard. Those boxes of cans are heavy, and they do not move themselves! Secondly, Ed cares passionately about Shepherds of Good Hope’s mission, and he shares it with everyone he can in the Ottawa community.
One challenge Ed faces on a daily basis is that the truck is not refrigerated. . This means we often have to turn down donations since we cannot safely transport the food. This is not just a problem for our clients who are in need, it contributes to the larger issue of food waste in our society.
Ed stresses, “I’ve loved driving Rusty Ruby for all these years, but she’s been here a lot longer than I have and is reaching her age of retirement at almost 13 years old now. It would be amazing if Shepherds of Good Hope had a new, refrigerated truck so we could pick up fresh nutritious food that many of our clients desperately need.”
Unfortunately, we cannot retire Rusty Ruby until we raise enough money for a new truck. If we had a new truck that could pick up things like fresh meat and produce, we would be able to lower our food costs as well.
Feeding people who are hungry, reducing food waste and saving money that we can in turn spend on programming to support people to get out of homelessness, these are all issues we really care about at Shepherds of Good Hope.
We want to let our neighbours know that we will be starting a campaign early October to raise money for a new, refrigerated truck. If you would like more information about our truck campaign, please contact us at 613-789-8210 or send an email to donate@sghottawa.com and see how you can get involved. Caroline Cox is Senior Manager, Communications and Community and Volunteer Services at the Shepherds of Good Hope.