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I’m trying to speak with Katie Hession over the phone. As usual, it’s a little difficult to understand her, because as usual her mouth is full. I’m in my windowless office, talking on the ol’ landline, trying to keep my suit clean while I scarf down leftover pasta out of a tupperware container before my lunch break ends.
Katie, of course, is also at work. She’s sitting at a table at the Tulip restaurant, in the Hilton on Queen Street. She’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans, working on a laptop on a patio, Tulip has just reopened, and has signed on to Mealshare, where Katie works. Katie is eating the menu item Tulip has just dedicated to Mealshare. I can hear that menu item over the phone. It sounds delicious.
Mealshare is a group that partners with restaurants in cities across Canada (and recently three in the United States) to provide meals for youth in need. The restaurant chooses one menu item to become the Mealshare item, and every time it gets ordered some money goes to Mealshare. From there it is distributed to charities that feed youth. In Ottawa, that includes Operation Come Home, as well as the Parkdale Food Centre after school program and the Boys and Girls club.
Katie has been with Mealshare about a year and a half. A lot of the company’s reach is achieved through social media, which made Katie a natural fit as community manager. Already a well-known local personality with her Instagram page @yowcitystyle, she uses that social media cachet to spread the love to the charities her group helps and the restaurants who sign on with Mealshare.
Once every few weeks, we see Katie pop in to Operation Come Home with a group of restaurant employees in tow. The Heart and Crown comes quite often. They come in to cook breakfast for the youth at the drop-in, and so they can see where the money from their Mealshare item goes.
This extends to overseas as well. In addition to their local charity partners, about 15% of the money Mealshare doles out goes to Save The Children. Most of those meals are donated to children in Africa, locally sourced from farms and suppliers in the area.
Here at home, Mealshare is doing a booming business. Ottawa has been an especially welcoming city for this program. When Mealshare had one of their bi-annual “launches” in June, they announced 28 new partner restaurants who had signed on to be part of the program. That’s 28 restaurants out of 28 they approached with the idea.
There is nothing more important for homeless youth than community. They come to our drop-in for breakfast, but also to be a part of a community. Meeting other youth going through the same struggles and hardships, and forming bonds. The community surrounding Operation Come Home is just as important.
It’s reassuring and heartwarming to know that there are so many out there who care about street-involved and at-risk youth. Mealshare manages to bring together dozens of restaurants who want to make this a safer community for our youth through their simple donation model. This means that all those local businesses are involved, and through them thousands of local customers become involved as well.
All of the lunches and most of the breakfasts our youth eat at OCH are paid for by funding from Mealshare. Some of our youth who finish their placement at FoodWorks go on to work in Mealshare partner restaurants, like Oz Kafe. But most encouragingly, we see restaurant employees grateful for the opportunity to do something important by coming in and participating in person. And every time they do, we see Katie’s charming, happy face. It might be the only time she’s not putting food into it.
She tells me, between forkfuls, that she became interested in the Mealshare program after spending several years as a special education teacher in Toronto. She saw first-hand the difference poor nutrition versus good nutrition makes in a classroom setting, among disadvantaged youth. The kids who didn’t have a good breakfast clearly had less interest in attending school. The John Bosco Achievement Centre is full this year, and the students who attend are full as well thanks to Mealshare.
I ask Katie how this makes her feel. What’s it like to be a part of something that provides a healthier lifestyle and greater opportunity for youth who otherwise would have a more difficult time? She takes a moment before answering.
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