Photo cred: Lisa Fotios
Written by: David Hood
It is hard to believe that it was a year ago today that we officially opened a permanent food bank space in the buildings at Russell Gardens so that we could continue to serve our neighbours. It has been a tremendous honour and privilege to come alongside our neighbours in this way and tangibly address the very real crisis of food insecurity in our community. From the very beginning, we wanted to be a church that didn’t just exist for ourselves but existed for the good of our neighbours. We want to be for the city; the very best neighbours and citizens, sacrificing for the thriving and flourishing of our city at every level. God has seen fit to honour that desire by opening door after door for our church in Alta Vista’s social housing communities. We started at Russell Gardens, an Ottawa Community Housing apartment complex, in 2017 with a monthly brunch we hosted on-site to build community. When the pandemic locked down the lounges, we pivoted to delivering food orders from the Confederation Court food bank to meet needs and stay connected and then pivoted again to distributing food orders in the lounge when the weather turned cold. We eventually pivoted to collaborating with OCH, Options Bytown, the Ottawa Food Bank, and Confederation Court to construct a satellite site of their operation on the premises. Construction started in the summer of 2021 and our doors opened to our clients on December 6. It is amazing what can be accomplished when people work together.
At no point did we initiate any of these pivots, but God just kept leading us into more. It has been a tremendous blessing to have our own space, and I like to think of it as a symbolic testament to our neighbours that we are here to stay as long as we’re needed. To ensure the sustainability of this ever-growing outreach, we hired a Food Bank coordinator with church funds and grants.
Every Monday, we receive two pallets of perishable and non-perishable food from the Ottawa Food Bank. Our coordinator unloads it all, shelves it, gets everything organized for our volunteers, does deliveries to our clients with mobility issues, and completes all of our documentation. We want to make sure that everybody gets the same amount and type of food if possible, and we want to ensure that people are consistently getting essential foods, so if we are low on any items, our coordinator uses church funds to make up the shortfall. This is something our church budgets for as part of our outreach. We also try to keep our shelves stocked with coffee, tea, sugar, diapers, and wipes.
In the evening, we have teams of four volunteers welcome our neighbours and walk them through the shelves where they can choose their non-perishables and through two other stations where they receive milk, bread, eggs, lots of fresh vegetables and fruit, meat, extras, speciality items, treats, hygiene products, and even, sometimes, food for their pets. Because we have four volunteers, one person is able to actually visit with every client and ask them how they are. People are really struggling, and we don’t just want to feed them, we want to create moments for connection and community, where people can feel seen, heard, valued, and loved. By God’s grace, we have developed some beautiful relationships, and tenants have attended our church events and worship gatherings. Last spring, I was able to attend a memorial for the 17 neighbours we lost over COVID, some due to overdoses, suicide, and homicide, and I was invited to pray for the community and share a message of hope, which thankfully Jesus gives us a lot of. We have gone from being a “church group that runs an event”, to being a reliable partner and faithful relational presence. We are now more active in the community than we ever were before COVID. We are there every week. And now that things are opening back up, we are being invited to community meals and activities, not just as sponsors or collaborators, but as guests; friends of the community. Not only that, but our work at Russell Gardens has opened doors in other communities. We now have other teams delivering food orders from the Russell Heights food bank to neighbours all across Alta Vista on Wednesday evenings. Between these two food insecurity outreaches, we are serving 120-150 people every month.
As we look back to the start of the pandemic, we could not have dreamed of what God would do. We are humbled and unbelievably grateful for the story God is writing with our church, OCH, the Food Bank, and our neighbours. I pray more stories like this to get written all across our city. Who knows what the future holds as we continue to follow God’s promptings?