Message from the team
The Greater Vancouver Food Bank (GVFB) would like to thank our wonderful volunteers for their support, commitment and stamina during the recent summer months. This is when we predominately experience volunteer shortages due to people being away on vacation, however, this year was like no other with the unbearable heatwave and Canada-wide travel restrictions finally being lifted.
A big thank you to everyone who continued to turn up to work outside at our distribution sites and in our warehouse during these extreme temperatures. You amazed us all with your resilience. We are very grateful and proud of you all.
In July we relocated our Vancouver distribution site to 295 Terminal Avenue. We were extremely fortunate to find a new, easy accessible location, only a 2-minute walk from the Science World Skytrain station.
Thank you for being accommodating with the change to our Vancouver location. We appreciate that we are still navigating through the pandemic and are touched by how many people choose the GVFB for their volunteering experience. If you can please continue to spread the word amongst friends, family and colleagues who may also be interested in volunteering with us, this is much appreciated.
Group volunteers return to our distribution sites!
In the last few months, we have seen an increase in group volunteers helping out at our distribution sites. It is a great team-building activity where you see firsthand the impact of your work and how you are supporting our clients.
We welcome teams ranging in size from 3-10 people. Here is some great feedback from a few of our regular volunteering groups:
“We’ll 100% encourage them to take advantage of this opportunity to build the team working and meeting new people!” – Sara from Fido
“It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to volunteer as part of your work and provides an excellent opportunity for team building.” – Ashley from Panago Pizza
“It gives you a sense of community, we are always looking at ways to give back as much as we can.” – Aaron from IRL Construction
Vancouver CAP Market, 1405 Thornton Street
At the beginning of July, we opened our Vancouver CAP Market, which accommodates a large number of our 112 Community Agency Partners to collect their weekly food orders more efficiently, especially those located in the Downtown Eastside. This impressive new space has fridges stocked with fresh food, freezers, dry and bulk goods, as well as kitchen equipment. In fact, the cold storage capacity is double more than what we have at our Burnaby location!
At our Vancouver CAP Market, we have new volunteering opportunities which include:
- Agency Pick-up Assistant
- Agency Restocking Volunteers
If you would like to hear more about any of these opportunities, any available shifts will be listed on your MyImpact page on Better Impact. Please note this site does not have the number of shifts as our regular warehouse and distribution roles do.
Your Volunteer Impact from April to June 2021
- 1,312 new clients registered with the GVFB
- 11,800 volunteer hours were donated to the GVFB
- 806,000 lbs of food were distributed to our Community Agency Partners
- 1,042,000 lbs of food were donated to the GVFB
- You helped us distribute 17.94 lbs of food per individual per week
- We supported 10,704 lives through direct distribution
