KAMLOOPS — The Mustard Seed New Life Community kicked off its meals sponsorship program Thursday.
In order to sponsor a meal, businesses donate to the Mustard Seed and send volunteers to the Outreach Centre.
It was all hands on deck for a team of volunteers from Urban Systems.
The company signed up to sponsor four meals at the Mustard Seed New Life Community, at $1,000 a meal.
Mustard Seed Managing Director Diane Down says this kind of community involvement helps support programs offered by the Outreach Centre.
“We’re asking for a $1,000 donation,” Down said. “That not only covers the cost of the meal, but it also just helps us supplement some of our other programming. We have a volunteer coordinator they can get in touch with and the volunteer coordinator can plug them in to whatever time frame suits them best.”
The Urban Systems volunteers were given a quick lesson in the kitchen after touring the building and discovering the different services the Mustard Seed has to offer.
“The dental portion of this facility is amazing,” said Lisa Bruvold, Foundation Secretary at Urban Systems. “I didn’t know they had that. I didn’t know much about it, so the whole upstairs for rehabilitation for people in the community is great.”
Kamloops Alliance Church has been serving The Mustard Seed New Life Community for years, but Pastor of Missional Engagement Megan Klassen says the church is eager to get even more involved.
“We believe that we are called to serve and serve those that are maybe margianalized and maybe sometimes forgotten, and so we feel called to do this,” Klassen said.
“We want to also just be part of our community. We’re just across the bridge, so we see a lot of the same kind of people that come to our services. So, we just want our congregation to be involved.”
With the Mustard Seed’s Easter meal just around the corner, there is yet another opportunity for community involvement.
“We’ll need volunteers kind of leading up to it on the Saturday and Sunday to help do some prep and then on the day of, sort of morning and afternoon shifts to prep and serve and clean up,” Down said. “We’d love to bring folks on board that would like to serve that meal.”
Anyone interested in volunteering can sign up at theseed.ca. To get involved with meal sponsorship contact Katrina McKinley at (250) 682-6544 or email volunteer@theseed.ca.
