A Calgary charity that helps get healthy lunches to kids in need is in desperate need of drivers to take those meals to local schools.
Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids (BB4CK) says the demand for school lunches is at an all-time high.
“Right now, we’re delivering more than 7,800 lunches every single school day to over 280 schools across our city,” said BB4CK executive director Stephanie Gauthier.
“We’ve seen an increase in over 300 lunches just since Christmastime.”
“Folks are really struggling around our city,” she added. “Our need in our schools is reflective of what’s happening in the rest of our city.”
Gauthier says more than 650 volunteers help BB4CK every week, and they couldn’t function without them.
“In order to do this, we have a large community of volunteers that continue to support us, and one of our volunteers are our delivery drivers. They are the bridge between getting lunches from our central kitchen and our other kitchens out to those schools and into the hands of those kids.”
Gauthier says the position has a very small time commitment.
“It’s a really unique opportunity to give back to the community within a really short time frame,” she said. “Volunteering as a driver usually runs from 9 a.m. until noon.”
“You’re out there delivering the bins (of food) to those individual schools, and then you’re bringing the bins back to us.
“We have a booking calendar, so you can hop in and come as often as you like, or as little as you like.”
Gauthier says the organizations is able to offset some of the financial costs of being a volunteer driver through mileage reimbursement or a tax receipt.
Volunteer Nick Hoy says helping BB4CK has been a wonderful experience.
“It’s amazing to work for a cause where I know that I’m going to better our community,” he said, adding that the work isn’t tough but is certainly rewarding.
To learn more and sign up to be a driver, you can visit BB4CK.org.
