A heartfelt presentation about the Starfish Pack Program

The Abbotsford Rotary  Club is the first Rotary Club alphabetically in Canada.  They are also a leader in fighting child hunger in their community.  The idea of child hunger creates images in most of us ofthird world countries, drought, famine, political instability.  Unfortunately, there are many examples of child hunger in our communities.

School Districts provide school meals, breakfasts of lunches, that may be the only meal a child gets in a day.  The issue of what happens on weekends has been largely unaddressed.  Bruce spoke to two specific instances of families in Abbotsford where children, through various unfortunate circumstances, had no food on weekends.

The Abbotsford Club looked at the problem and created the Starfish pack program where needy children get a backpack of nutritious food to take home to keep them fed over the weekend.  Their first attempt to help was to provide 50 packs each week end.  The schools they were dealing with said they needed 60.  With a cost of $525 per pack per year, the Club was not able to fund more.  Instead, they worked with the local newspaper to bring the need to the attention of the community.  As a result, donations flowed in from the community and the program could expand to meet the demand.  They developed 36 partners and over 100 volunteers in the first 8 months and raised over $100,000 from community donations.