Port Coquitlam, BC March 15, 2022 — The final deadline for The People’s Pantry Lottery is midnight April 1, 2022

The People’s Pantry Food Recovery Society is having a 50/50 lottery to help support their Healthy Hamper program. “Supporting the Healthy Hamper 50/50 is a great way to make a difference not only in a persons or families lives, but also in the environment by keeping good food out of the landfill” says Pam Eberl Executive Director with The People’s Pantry. Last year they prevented 50,519 kg of food going into our landfills and redirected it to people and families in need. This program feeds over 70 families primarily made up of seniors, single parents and at-risk youth. Operators hope to raise $20,000.

Information About The People’s Pantry Food Recovery Society

The People’s Pantry Food Recovery Society builds bridges between food retailers facing excess food and people who are facing food insecurity, focusing primarily on seniors, single parents, and at-risk youth. Additionally, we seek to educate our community about food waste and ways we can reduce food that would otherwise end up in the landfill. We are a registered charity incorporated on May 4 2020, primarily volunteer-based, serving the Tri-Cities.

Serving Our Community Through the Healthy Hampers Program

Our Healthy Hampers Program collects over 1500 lbs of food each week from a variety of food retailers, food wholesalers, and growers.  We distribute this food to provide nutritious, varied food hampers weekly to over 75 families or 195 individuals (101 children).  Each of our hampers contain perishable food items that cater to the cultural and nutritional requirements of our hamper families.  We do not purchase any food items – all of our food is recovered from our food suppliers at no cost to us.  There is no cost to join our Healthy Hamper food distribution program.  Our hampers weigh between 25-40 lbs and can support anywhere between 1 to 9 people in households.  The additional benefit of our operating model is that we are keeping most of the food we collect out of the landfills. 

The Healthy Hampers program has been up and running since June 2020 when the effects of COVID were affecting the ability of many people who are economically disadvantaged in our community from accessible healthy, nutritious food.  The need for our program has not diminished since that time and our program has grown and expanded as we take on new sources of recovered food, new families (we have a waitlist), and expanded our volunteer base in order to support the increasing demands of the program.  Since the beginning, the groups we have supported have also expanded to support other social agencies in the Tri-Cities including Immigration Link, House of Omeed, Soroptomists (replacing their Warm Place program during COVID), New View Society, SD43 and more.