Fresh Food Weekly is a food security program that serves low-income families in Barrie and Innisfil. This year for Thanksgiving, Fresh Food Weekly will be delivering at least 100 meal boxes to low-income families living in Barrie and Innisfil on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023.
However, they’re still raising money to add additional families to their Thanksgiving meal box delivery list. If you'd like to sponsor an additional family, then you can still do so until Sept. 17th.
With these Thanksgiving meal boxes, recipients are treated to Kawartha Dairy's 1.5L tubs of specialty Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream. For those who might not be up for taste-testing a tub this big, though, recipients also have the option of choosing either a tub of Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream or an actual 8-inch Pumpkin Pie from Fox's Bakery & Deli.
What’s the Cost to Sponsor?
The cost to sponsor a family is $46 (turkey sizes are 3-5kg and reflect family size) and the value of these meal boxes are $147. Donations can be made either through CanadaHelps (Fresh Food Weekly is run through The VanDyck Foundation, which is the registered charity issuing the tax receipt), by e-transfer to: [email protected] (send an email to the same address with your legal name and address for a charitable tax receipt) or by PayPal or credit card through the website (charitable tax receipts will be issued automatically for donations made through the website). For companies that would like to sponsor several families via wire transfer, please contact Leah Dyck directly at: [email protected].
Apply for a Thanksgiving Meal Box
If you're living in a low-income household and would like to apply for a Thanksgiving Meal Box, please apply by filling out our online application form. Please note, to be eligible you must:
- Reside in Barrie or Innisfil
- Be low-income
Ripple of Kindness Votes on Fresh Food Weekly
On Aug. 16th, 2023, the Ripple of Kindness (ROK) - Founding Chapter - Barrie, announced they’d selected Fresh Food Weekly as the recipient for their September round of funding. This funding has come in right at the perfect time for Fresh Food Weekly, as they had to halt their August deliveries for the first time since launching their meal box delivery program in June 2022. They did not have enough funds to cover the costs of their program’s current 80 low-income families.
Now, though, thanks to Ripple of Kindness Barrie, they’ll be able to continue serving their current 80 families for the next six months, as well as add an additional 20 new families for six months!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ripple of Kindness, they're a charitable organization composed entirely of women. These women raise funds for local charities of their choice, four times a year, simply because they want to make their community a better place. Every three months, they vote for a local non-profit/charity that someone in the group has nominated, to award the funds to. To date, they’ve awarded more than $660,000 to local charities in the community since 2016.
For their September 2023 round of funding, 22 charities were nominated to be voted for, and Fresh Food Weekly received 60 percent of their votes and the total amount to be awarded is expected to be +$30K.
Fresh Food Weekly has offered these 20 new program openings to clients of the Barrie Native Friendship Centre and are thrilled to have some program openings for new families in need to get some much-needed help.
Harvest Dinner Fundraiser
In addition to being chosen by ROK, Fresh Food Weekly has also been chosen by Christ Church - St. Jude's Anglican Church in Thornton, who's hosting a Harvest Dinner fundraiser on Sept. 30th. The money raised from this fundraiser will go towards paying for the turkeys in our first 100 Thanksgiving meal boxes.
