My name is Leah Dyck and I started a food charity here in Barrie, Ontario: www.FreshFoodWeekly.com and during the first four months (June to September 2021), we received more than $50,000 worth of fresh produce and bread items from local farmers and food businesses, and we were delivering +2,000 pounds of produce to 267 low-income families each week.

At the end of August, I was informed that we needed to vacate our operating space by Oct. 1st. For the last month and a half I’ve been frantically searching for a new space to work out of but we’ve had no luck and unfortunately the Fresh Food Weekly program was forced to shut down. 

Despite all my best efforts, I have not been able to find a new location to work out of and so I’m launching this crowdfunding campaign to raise money so we can lease a space to work out of.

I Sought Out Help
I have reached out to every church in Barrie, all the city councillors, two MP’s and two MPP’s, even the Office of Justin Trudeau. I’ve also reached out to every single funding organization in Simcoe County and 10-15 in Toronto, but because I do not have charitable status yet, none can give me any funding. I have also reached out to the Simcoe County Food Council, the Canadian Mental Health Association, Living Green, Urban Pantry, the Community Builders, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, the United Way of Simcoe Muskoka, Second Harvest, Foodshare Toronto, the Legion, the Barrie Food Bank, Redwood Park Communities, Catulpa, the Barrie Community Health Centre, the Gilbert Centre, the Barrie Community Foundation, Georgian College’s Centre for Change Making & Social Innovation, as well as the Henry Bernick Centre, the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, the Karma Project, Paul Sadlon Junior, the Huronia Community Foundation, the Scottish Rite Club of Barrie, Empower Simcoe, the New Path Foundation, Feed it Forward, the Innisfil Community Foundation, Gilda’s Club, the Ontario Disability Support Program, the Rotary Club of Barrie, the Barrie Municipal Non Profit Housing Corporation, the YMCA of Simcoe Muskoka, many local realtors, including management at the Kozlov and Bayfield malls, many golf and country clubs with lots of big spaces, and there’s probably more people/organizations I’ve reached out to but have forgotten about. 

Based on the amount of organizations I’ve reached out to for help but haven’t got any, I’d say it’s safe to assume that I could reach out to another 50 and still not get any help and so I think my only option at this point is to raise money to lease a space for Fresh Food Weekly to operate out of. 

Re-Cap of Accomplishments 

I just want to provide a quick re-cap on what our program was able to accomplish in only four months:

• We were able to secure 20 food donors, and 14 were donating their extra fresh produce and baked goods each week.
• We were receiving +2,000 pounds of donated food each week (around 10,000 pounds a month).
• We were delivering this food to 267 low-income families each week. The total number of people receiving it each month was 2,304, and 1,112 were children.
• We garnered a group of 20 volunteer delivery drivers who collectively made +1,060 deliveries each month. According to the head of volunteers at the Barrie Food Bank, this is “way more” than their group of volunteer drivers.