The Rotary Club of North Delta and its foundation donated $43,558 to community groups and to student bursaries during the year ending June 30, 2022, mainly to Delta and Surrey groups with a focus on providing services to North Delta residents.
Those funds are separate from the club’s Starfish Pack program, which currently deliver 1,300 pounds of food each week to 132 local elementary school children.
The annual Train the Trainer event proved to be another successful outing for the Abbotsford Innovative Fitness location.
IF Abbotsford raised a total of $26,150 for the Starfish Pack and Health in Motion during the event on Friday (Nov. 25).
Small acts of kindness by Delta residents are adding up to help local children facing food insecurity at home.
The Delta Community Foundation (DCF) donated a total of $1,500 to the Rotary Club of North Delta and South Delta Baptist Church, operators of the North Delta and South Delta Starfish Pack programs.
All of the money donated was collected a few coins at a time via “kindness meters” installed around the city.
After starting with just three students in 2020, the Similkameen Starfish Pack program has grown to support 16, and so has the need for financial support for the program.
The Starfish Pack program provides students at Cawston Elementary School and Similkameen Elementary Secondary School with food to take home over the weekends.
For the last six years, the Starfish Backpack program has been feeding school children in need.
Every week, the child receives a grocery bag full of food from the Kamloops Food Bank.
“It hits their hearts when they hear children don’t have food, and I think that’s something for all of us that’s impossible to understand. There are children in our communities that don’t have food when they go home,” said Kamloops Food Bank executive director Bernadette Siracky.
“Our community has been extremely generous with funding with donations. And we wanted to make sure that that money wasn’t just sitting in the bank, and that it was helping families,” Van Raes said. “There’s a huge need. Now that we’re in endemic mode, we have inflation issues. People are literally choosing whether to pay their rent or put food on their tables.”
“So we want to make sure that we can cover as many families as possible with just a little bit of something for them.”
The Peardonville Community Association Society has donated $500,000 from the sale of their hall to the Starfish Pack Program of the Archway Food Bank.
“Our Peardonville Community Hall Committee choose the Starfish Program as it represents most closely the mandate of the original Peardonville Society objectives,” said June Ross, a member of the Peardonville Committee.
“The main fundraisers and programs were for children. Stemming from the 2nd World War, the neighbourhood women became part of the Women’s Institute whose motto was “no child should ever go hungry” and the Starfish program fits that motto perfectly.”
“Words cannot adequately express how grateful we are for this donation,” said Rod Santiago, the Executive Director of Archway Community Services. “This will do so much to enhance the food the children receive each week, the number of children we can help and live on as ongoing endowment.”
Gray Elementary students, Kiera Hattrick and Brooklyn Brandon, raise money for North Delta Starfish Pack.
Members of Vernon’s RCMP detachment have chipped in to support the local Starfish meal program for hungry kids.
Shiela Guinan, branch manager of the downtown Maple Ridge Westminster Savings location, along with fellow staff members Kim Borthwick and Parita Patel, handed Ineke Boekhorst, with the Meadow Ridge Rotary’s Starfish Pack Program, a cheque for $2,300.