‘A game changer': Donation from Shania Twain helps fight food insecurity in Winnipeg
A $15,000 donation from music superstar Shania Twain is helping to fight food insecurity in Winnipeg and keep wildfire evacuees fed.
The funds from the Shania Twain Foundation to MakeWay Charitable Society—Climate Change Connection will assist in increasing refrigeration space at Community Helpers Unite—a non-profit organization working to end food insecurity in Winnipeg's North End.
The increased refrigeration space—in the form of a 40-foot refrigerated shipping container—will help expand the organization's meal output by hundreds of meals per day, according to Kyle Bowman, operational culinary director for Community Helpers Unite.
'It helps in the increased capacity. I have the ability to bring in more from donations as well as from different community partners,' said Bowman.
'So now it's just bringing in more labour, bringing in more processing power and cooking for longer hours.'
Bowman said the organization is currently producing over 6,000 meals daily for wildfire evacuees on top of about 1,100 meals for community members.
'It's a game changer, really,' said Jennifer McRae, program outreach associate with Climate Change Connection.
McRae said that once emergency efforts are over to feed wildfire evacuees, the refrigerated container will be used to build a food distribution hub in Winnipeg—taking advantage of large surpluses of food that cannot make it to market.
'Winnipeg's currently missing out on hundreds of thousands of pounds of food a day because we don't have this cold storage in place, and it's contributing further to food waste,' said McRae.
She added that rotting food produces methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide, and that food waste prevention also positively impacts the climate.
The donation comes as part of a larger commitment by the Shania Twain Foundation to fund 375,000 meals nationwide to fight hunger.
-With files from CTV's Jamie Dowsett
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