First, some thanks are in order! Thank you to everyone who has donated items to our supplies cupboard – here Chelsea, our newest volunteer, is sorting out the toiletries, foods, and appliances in our cupboard which fills up more every day as the Christmas season approaches. We are collecting for our Christmas party right now, so if you have any frozen turkeys you’d like to donate, we’d gladly accept those!
Thank you to Merivale Vision Care! Their two-day trunk show with Montreal’s Georges et Phina Portent Des Lunettes raised $2,100 for Operation Come Home and our drop-in! A terrific event run by some very nice people!
Another terrific event run by some very nice people was the Vintage Pop-Up 613 event at Happy Goat Coffee. Their #BucksForATruck fundraiser got us $150 closer to getting a second truck for our BottleWorks crew!
Many offices, as we near Christmas time, come to visit us as volunteers for a day. Here, Mike Leila and Tyler from Transport Canada came by to cook our drop-in breakfast. For Mike, it was not his first time volunteering at OCH, but for Leila and Tyler it was – so they got the full tour!
And finally, something truly wonderful. Our FoodWorks program has been gaining momentum, not just for their home deliveries and catering services but also in the Ottawa foodie world. This is thanks to their increasing skills, their increasingly complex meals, and the creativity and patient mentorship of our chef.
The youth who leave our FoodWorks program do so with food preparation skills that give them a chance to gain employment in the food service industry. All they need is an establishment to give them a chance to do that work. One such establishment is the Oz Kafe, who have employed one of our former FoodWorks youth for the past six months.
They are impressed with that youth, and by extension became impressed with the FoodWorks program itself. And so, on Monday October 29th, the Oz Kafe invited our chef and the entire FoodWorks program into their restaurant to run their prestigious Chef Night. This is a very big deal for local chefs, and maybe an even bigger deal for our youth, who got a chance to run a real restaurant kitchen for high-end customers for a day.
FoodWorks came up with a five-course meal (menu above), which was then sold to the food-loving patrons for $40 apiece. And in what we believe is a first for this event, Oz Kafe donated a portion of the proceeds to OCH! They raise money for us, they promote our program, and most importantly – they employ our youth! Thank you Oz Kafe, for being an example of community involvement that hopefully inspires many others in Ottawa!