Loaves & Fishes is dedicated to alleviating as much hunger, homlessness, despair and pain as is possible within the limited scope of our finances.
Because we are totally donor financed, what we are abe to achieve yearly, monthly and daily depends very much on the generosity of the people that support us.
What we are able to achieve is quite remarkable - God is good as are the people that give to make our miracles happen:
- we feed a well balanced supper to 100-150 people three times a week.
- we make and distribute with the help of many volunteers over 150 school lunches every morning.
- we purchase fresh food stuffs to fill the lunches.
- we organize volunteers for our school lunch program, ie.baking peanut free cookies, making sandwiches,
- filling lunch bags and distributing the lunches to the schools in the morning.
- we organize volunteers for our supper program ie. serving suppers, clean up and delivery of suppers to shut-ins, the elderly and the sick. There are approximately 1000 volunteers yearly that participate in our programs in one form or another.
- we distribute food hampers to the needy that are filled by the Food Bank, Salvation Army , Sacred Heart Catholic
-Church and also make up our own hampers in crisis situations.
- we pickup and take back home people that want to come to our suppers and are unable to pay for or access the handi bus.
- we drive individuals to doctor appointments, work interviews and first day of work.
- we counsel and provide crisis intervention to people who ask for our assistance. This is usually in the form of finding immediate emergency housing such as the Woman's Shelter and Safe Harbour mat program. Extended help comes in the form of directing individuals in the right direction for help ie. social services, Red Deer Housing, manpower, emergency mat accomodations for the night etc. and also assisting in finding permanent accommodations and employment.
-we work with people who have community service hours or youth justice hours to complete. They are given the opportunity to work off their hours by working at our facility.
- a chaplain and three staff members are available to give spiritual counsel and encouragement.