›› Ruben Anderson

Family Dinner has been held at the ­Fernwood Community Centre on Monday nights for the past five years—but it is only partially funded.

It is hard to do a good job—at work, at school, as a parent, as a partner, or as a friend—if you are hungry. But everything is getting more expensive and the grocery budget is often one of the first things to get cut.

With seven other community centres, Fernwood NRG is part of the Coalition of Neighbourhood Houses. Our eight centres gratefully share food donated by ColdStar Solutions, the Food Rescue Project, and grants from Island Saving Credit Union and the United Way.

Every week our chef makes a fresh, hot multi-course dinner with both meat and vegetarian entrées. Families are welcome by donation and no one is turned away. Up to a hundred of our neighbours show up for this community meal—and there are ­usually leftovers and sometimes extra fruit and vegetables that can be taken home to help stretch the food budget.

We put out toys for young kids and often have books or a craft project to work on. Stevenson Park’s field and playground is also right outside the door for kids to burn off steam, so parents can sit down to eat a meal they didn’t have to cook and don’t have to clean up after.

We try to run Family Dinner with a few hours from staff and a bunch of ­volunteers—and we don’t have enough funding to coordinate volunteers.

$3,000 would fund volunteer coordination, kitchen staff, and food rescue staff time for the Family Dinner for 2019.

 

About Make It Happen

The Make It Happen projects are new ideas that have been put ­forward and need time and funding, or they are projects that have been successful but lack long term funding or some other kind of support.

Some of these projects are big and some are small—but all of them make a real difference in the lives of some of our neighbours here in Fernwood.

If you see a project you think is critically important or would bring joy to our neighbourhood, please Give Where You Live. You can Make It ­Happen with your funding or materials.