Yesterday, the VA Partners team spent the morning volunteering for the Daily Bread Food Bank in the west-end of Toronto. As part of our 1% pledge, we aim to volunteer in our community as a team every few months, and were able to work an order picking shift at the Daily Bread offices.

 
When we arrived, we signed in and met with one of the full-time staff members at Daily Bread who explained to us the order picking process. We were then split into teams and helped organize and collect orders for specific programs and food banks across the city. After we put each order together, we wrapped up the pallets of boxes and left them in a cooler, ready to be distributed.
 
Daily Bread Food Bank is surprisingly not a food bank: the centre itself facilitates the collection of donations from the community, and processes the food to be sent to their member agencies. Daily Bread has a strong volunteer base, with over 10’000 individual volunteers each year and 52 full time staff.
 
We learned yesterday that a third of the food they distribute is fresh produce! Their Farm to Food Bank program engages local farmers to contribute produce, which the Daily Bread team organizes quickly to distribute to their member agencies.
 
We were lucky enough to see first-hand the huge amount of produce and donations coming in, and felt inspired by the generosity of our community.
 
To learn more about the Pledge 1% program, check out their website.