Helping Hands getting new ovens

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This article was published 18/07/2024 (521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Helping Hands Brandon is not only getting new ovens, but it’s also getting a new face after a recent rebranding.

In February, the non-profit, which serves free lunches five times a week, made a plea to Brandon East MLA Glen Simard and other MLAs for new ovens, as the old ones were failing. But this week, after cashing in a term investment and receiving generous donations from the community, renovations have begun.

“Right now, we’re in a situation where we’re limited with what we can do,” Helping Hands executive director Amanda Bray told the Sun. “With the new ovens we’re actually going to be able to utilize all of our donations, so we’re going to be able to do things like hold items hot — we didn’t have those capabilities and it was always a constant struggle.”

Not only did the organization have to purchase the more spacious ovens, but installing them requires large-scale work because the organization operates out of an old building and the gas hookups and hood vents have been grandfathered in. The total cost for the renovations is about $150,000 — a large amount for a non-profit, Bray said.

But an anonymous donation from the Brandon Area Community Foundation of $35,000, a $25,000 donation from local companies — including Grand Valley Contracting, Brandon Heating and Plumbing, and CW2 Construction and Design, which are doing the reno work — plus Helping Hand’s own cash, meant that they could finally greenlight the much-needed upgrade.

“I can’t wait to get our new ovens to be able to have more variety,” Bray said. “It’s those little things in life that can make such a world of difference. Not that there’s anything wrong with serving, you know, potato salad a lot, (but) it’ll be nice to be able to expand things.”

Bray said the work is being done in shorter intervals spread throughout the summer, so that the soup kitchen doesn’t have to close for too many days at a time. This week, it was closed Wednesday and is expected to be closed today. Still, the work of preparing and serving meals doesn’t stop, as the organization is serving bagged lunches of sandwiches, salads and snacks during the temporary closure.

“We’re averaging 186 people a day, so there’s no option to just shut down,” she said, adding that the average in the past has been 165 people per day.

Just this past April, compared to April 2023, the soup kitchen served 1,500 more meals. The organization also started providing bagged lunches on Fridays to the 7th Street Health Access Centre to provide meals to people on the weekend when the soup kitchen is closed.

Bray said the organization will also be getting a new pick-up van through a partnership with Sunrise Credit Union, which will replace their run-down 2009 minivan that used to leave volunteers picking up food to bring to the soup kitchen on the side of the road.

“The fact that our meals served and the amount of community that we are feeding is going through the roof, we knew that we needed to not only grow in the kitchen, we needed to be able to grow by picking up more donations,” she said.

Meanwhile, the organization has also recently rebranded itself, officially adding “Soup Kitchen” to its name and adopting a new colour scheme and tagline: “Nurturing Our Community.”

“A big part of that and our soup kitchen is we’re so much more than just a place to come to eat … It’s being able to come in and have a meal with your friends, have a cup of coffee and feel like you belong somewhere,” Bray said, adding that the organization is aiming toward destigmatizing the use of a soup kitchen.

And while the new ovens, new van and new look are a fresh chapter for the organizations, continuing to see poverty and need is not.

“We’re seeing a lot of new faces, and it’s a lot of families and seniors,” Bray said. “It’s a lot of folks that are on fixed income and as the cost of living is rising, unfortunately their fixed income isn’t changing.”

The soup kitchen hopes to reopen on Friday for sitdown meal service. Other closure days when bagged lunches will be available are expected throughout the next few months, with a renovation completion date by the end of the summer.

» gmortfield@brandonsun.com

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