The Salvation Army Belleville CFS Modifies Lunch Program to Better Serve Community

by rubani
Categories: Divisional News
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Instead of cutting back on the feeding program when COVID-19 hit, the Belleville Community and Family Services of The Salvation Army stepped it up.

Belleville CFS previously ran a very successful lunch program 4 days a week, but soon started to see a huge gap in services throughout the city. The team at Belleville decided to not only increase services but ensure that the most vulnerable population was being taken care of.

The vision was to serve nutritious, sustainable & dependable hot meals for 7 days a week, throughout the entire year, straight from the dining room at the ministry unit’s downtown location. With the onset of the pandemic, however, a new and fast solution had to be implemented.

The Sally-Ann takeout supper was the name given to the modified but continued efforts put forth by the Belleville team. Each night, between 70-100 take-out style meals were being served to anyone facing food insecurity in the area. Over 2000 meals were provided in the month of June alone. The meals have been very well received by the community and visitors look forward to all the delicious creations such as chicken fried rice, chili, Mexican casserole and homemade cookies- just to name a few. To build on this success, the Belleville team decided to create a satellite pick up location from their Corps, which enabled guests from the West End of Belleville to partake in the delicious meals every Wednesday evening in July. Traditionally, the Belleville CFS’s lunch program ran with the participation of many hardworking and dedicated volunteers. But due to the pandemic, the team had to work off a staff ran program only, with minimal volunteer interaction. While this presented itself as a great challenge, It’s amazing what a team of dedicated staff members -under the guidance of Valerie Hennessy, the Food Services Manager at Belleville- can create!