The Starfish pack program is up and running in Williams Lake elementary schools for the sixth consecutive year. A project of the Daybreak Rotary Club, the Starfish packs provide weekend meals for families in need.
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.
For over a year, Fountain Tire in Penticton has been fixing flat tires by donation, which has brought thousands of dollars to local charities.
The Penticton Rotary Starfish backpack program is the latest to benefit from the flat tire program.
With the help of a lot of generous donors during the month of August, Fountain Tire owner Chuck Thompson donated a whopping $3,974 to the Starfish backpack program.
“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.
Ending childhood hunger happens one child at a time. For the Starfish Pack Program, it starts with sending one food-stuffed backpack at a time home with hungry kids when school lets out for the weekend.
The Aldergrove and Abbotsford Starfish Pack programs are each $5,000 stronger thanks to a donation from the LiUNA (Laborers’ International Union of North America) local 1611 Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union.