North York's Second Harvest partners with food services company to expand reach

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Nine years ago, the city funded free summer camps at downtown community centres for poverty stricken children with one stipulation: campers had to bring a smile and a lunch.

No one registered.

"They couldn't afford to bring lunches every day," said Abby Robins, communications manager for Second Harvest. "These were places we delivered food to so we heard about it."

Second Harvest provides food for about 14,000 meals a day to children in breakfast programs, seniors on fixed incomes, women fleeing domestic abuse, psychiatric patients, homeless people and others who have fallen on hard times.

Second Harvest partnered with Sodexo Inc., a food and facilities management services company, the following year and the corporation expanded their Feeding Our Future program, which provided free lunches to high-needs campers in the Unites States, to Canada.

"Sodexo gets the food and makes the lunches and we deliver them," Robins said, adding the program has expanded from nine downtown camps to include three additional camps in the Jane Street and Finch Avenue area in North York as well as one in Etobicoke's Rexdale community.

For the months of July and August, Sodexo volunteers meet in the morning at York University five days a week to pack the lunches, which are made up of a sandwich, carrots and celery sticks, a fruit and a juice drink.

A Second Harvest driver then drops off the food to the 13 camps, Robins said, adding the program has also expanded to other Canadian provinces.

Robins noted the majority kids look forward to summer, but for those in breakfast and lunch programs at school, it can be a time for hunger.

"It's a fantastic program (Feeding Our Future) but I wonder how many kids out there we are not servicing," she said.

Jon Kristjanson, executive director of the Sodexo Foundation, said the Feeding Our Future program provides a safety net for at-risk youths who can't access lunch programs during summer months.

"Sadly, this program is needed," he said, adding at least seven Sodexo volunteers prepare 700 daily lunches. "I think this is one of the examples where the community and a corporation come together to make a difference."