With Easter around the corner, a service program is ensuring students in the community are not going hungry.
The service program is called YK Cares and its mission is to make sure students have full stomachs when they're not in school.
YKCares volunteers Violet Fodor, left, Beth Collinson, PJ Gariepy and Karen Short pose for a photo in the YK Co-op during one of their kit assembling sessions. The group will be accompanied by a host of other volunteers on Apr. 4 when they prepare meals in time for Easter.
It was founded three years ago when Angela Canning sat down with friends and brainstormed ideas for helping youth who are at risk.
At the time, she was already helping the homeless but was inspired to help students after learning that many schoolkids go without a decent meal for weeks at a time.
So, Canning and her team began donating “Weekend Food Kits.”
The kits contain six meals; enough food for an entire weekend. They include oatmeal for breakfast, entrees which are high in protein for lunch and dinner, fruit cups and snacks. They're dropped off at schools on Thursday where they can be anonymously picked up by students in need, said Canning.
“As long as we can make them, we will,” she said. “Our numbers have decreased at one school but we've been providing the other school with more than when we first started.”
They began by distributing 20 kits to Mildred Hall School and Weledeh Catholic School and have since doubled their donations, she said.
According to Canning, YK Cares and its volunteers have the capacity to distribute to any school in Yellowknife that may need assistance and many organizations have contributed to the group's success.
Yellowknife Food Rescue provides YK Cares with much of the food for their kits and the Yellowknife Co-op has donated $10,000 to the group over the last two years.
“We think the work they do is very important...we will do anything we can do to help them,” said the Yellowknife Co-op's business development manager Jeff Kincaid. “Ideally services like theirs shouldn't be needed but we want to see YK Cares achieve their goals.”