Harvest Kitchens

Vianey Flores receives her Cook's Assistant Certificate from Chef McNamara at the L.E.F. Harvest Kitchen.

OUR FOUR HARVEST KITCHENS train adults and youth with barriers to employment in food preparation, providing valuable job skills needed to help them achieve a self-sufficient future.

Working under the supervision of food service professionals, Harvest Kitchen trainees learn the skills of the trade while turning recovered food into nourishing prepared meals that Second Harvest then delivers to agencies lacking adequate kitchen facilities and resources to prepare foods for families and individuals in high-need communities.

Every day, Second Harvest drivers deliver a portion of our donated food to our Harvest Kitchens partners:

  • YMCA - Charles Street
  • Learning Enrichment Foundation (L.E.F.)
  • Centre for Opportunities Respect and Empowerment (CORE)
  • East Scarborough Boys and Girls Club

Outreach workers and volunteers also deliver a number of these balanced meals to those who are unable or reluctant to go to agencies because of physical or mental challenges.

 

Feeding Our Future 
Click here to see more happy campers
in our 2009 Feeding Our Future BBQ
photo gallery.

FEEDING OUR FUTURE is a summer program created by Second Harvest in partnership with the Sodexo Foundation. It started in 2000 when inner-city families were not taking advantage of free summer camp programs for their children because they were unable to provide them with a lunch. Feeding Our Future met this need.

Every weekday during July and August, volunteers from Sodexo make hundreds of delicious nutritious lunches, which Second Harvest delivers to about a dozen community centres in Toronto, thus ensuring that children who get subsidized lunches during the school year will also be receiving at least one nutritious meal a day while attending summer camp.

The delivery of these lunches would not be possible without the generosity of the program's primary benefactor, the Geoffrey H. Wood Foundation, who since 2005, has provided Second Harvest with the funding to deliver about 100,000 Feeding Our Future lunches to kids in Toronto. 

In summer 2009, Feeding our Future provided 28,500 lunches over a 7-week period.