Youth serve it up for seniors
By Contributor
A community brunch aimed at senior citizens was well received as participants of the Boundary Youth Success (BYS) Program served up breakfast for free at the Gospel Chapel in Grand Forks. The brunch, sponsored by the youth program based at Community Futures Boundary and many local businesses, was held on Saturday, May 8.
Participants in the program which employs youth with barriers, raised money through a series of fundraisers and charitable donations from many local businesses. A full breakfast highlighted by farm fresh meat from North Fork Pork and Poultry was on the menu for the dozens of seniors and friends of the program who came out. Despite competing with other events and Mothers Day celebrations, group facilitator Nik Green was quite happy with the youth’s effort and hard work.
“I’m extremely pleased at how professional and courteous the youth were,” said Green. “They seemed to get honest enjoyment out helping some of our local seniors out and seeing them smiling when served. They are more than capable of handling over a hundred visitors should we be able to ramp things up for the next one.”
“The Gospel Chapel was nice enough to see what we were trying to accomplish and offered up the space for free,” said Program Co-ordinator James Wilson of the sparkling new commercial grade kitchen available at the church.
The youth were mentored by Jacquie and Doug Wolff of Yaky Jacquies Cafe on Market Avenue. Doug was on hand to supervise the grill as the students learned their way around the kitchen. The Wolff’s are no strangers to these kind of events as they often oversee community breakfasts.
The breakfast was made possible by donations from Extra Foods, Overwaitea, Buy Low Foods, Flexus Body Systems, Clyde’s Pub, The Station Pub, Darren Pratt, Twisted Tomato and the staff of Community Futures.
“We hope to be able to run something like this again after seeing how successful the first incarnation was,” said Wilson.
The BYS Program is sponsored by Community Futures Boundary and made possible by Service Canada.
