On the third Wednesday of the month, a group of dedicated volunteers congregate at the Collingwood legion to pack boxes of food and deliver them to people who need it the most.
The Georgian Good Food Box program is celebrating 20 years of feeding Collingwood’s hungry this month. Organizers estimate their roughly 60 volunteers packaged up to 1.2 million kilograms of food monthly creating 86,000 boxes since 2004.
“It’s only been able to run because of volunteers – people who care. Collingwood has people who care with heart. All you need is a few people to get something going,” said Mark Redmond, a retired teacher, and one of the founding members of the program.
Redmond recalls the genesis of the program back in 2004, when he was involved in another committee tasked with looking at social services in the area.
“We had people on Ontario Works coming and telling us that fresh produce was a big thing they needed,” said Redmond.
He remembers a specific woman he dealt with at that time who had been a nurse in Scarborough until she had a stroke. Her husband had left her alone with her two daughters, and Redmond said she would feed her daughters with food from the store, while the woman was feeding herself from food bank donations.
“It broke my heart,” he said. “Many of them were young moms. I have eight sisters. I have a soft spot for that. It really bothered me.”
When bringing it up with his committee, one of the other members mentioned a food box program in Toronto and floated the idea of bringing it to town. He said all the group needed was $1,200 in seed money to start it up. The first club Redmond approached to ask for funding was the local Rotary Club, who offered to give him the whole $1,200.
“I went down to Toronto and picked up green bins, and we got rollers from the old Canadian Tire, and we were packing boxes in the basement of the old St. Mary’s Church,” he said.
The first run of boxes were handed out in April of 2004. Over time, the program has moved a few times, however, they’ve been working out of the Collingwood legion for at least the past 10 years.
The Georgian Good Food Box is a non-profit buying club that purchases fresh fruits and vegetables for distribution in South Georgian Bay monthly.
Food boxes are doled out in Collingwood, Wasaga Beach and Clearview. Each $21 box includes a 10-pound bag of potatoes, a two-pound bag of carrots, a two-pound bag of onions, a three-pound bag of apples, one cantaloupe, three ears of corn, three oranges, one head of lettuce, one cucumber and one package of grape tomatoes. These days, there are nearly 300 boxes prepared every month for Collingwood alone.
Any funds leftover every month are put back in the program which will provide free boxes to families in need, which typically translates to 35 boxes set aside for that purpose.
Current board member Mary Lou Dunn used the program in the past, which is what inspired her to join up to help the cause in 2013.
“I was a customer, and I loved what they were doing,” said Dunn.“I just want to help people, and if I’m going to do something, I want it to be useful and be something I believe in. Right now, food insecurity is a big deal.”
Dunn is responsible to organize all the orders through spreadsheets, organize the volunteers and plan out each month. She said orders are staying steady at this time, but that could change.
“It depends on interest rates. Right now, people are hungry and they don’t have money. This is such a good value,” she said.
For more information on the Georgian Good Food Box program, click here.
