Keeping North Central Students Fed with Chili for Children
Since 1979, Chili for Children has been providing children from marginalized families in the North Central area of Regina with healthy meals and cooking skills that they can carry through their lives.
They are an Indigenous led organization that offers a nutritious lunch for approximately 1,000 students per day. They primarily serve Kindergarten and elementary students at three inner city schools, but they are also now open to offer lunch to high school students in need twice a week at Scott Collegiate. In addition to this, they have also received a small grant to start a six-week course to teach parents how to cook nutritious food while on a limited budget. While they would like to expand their services further to address a growing need for food security, Greg Stevenson, Executive Director of Chili for Children expresses that they are currently at capacity with their resources.
“A few years ago, we were serving about 700 students per day and every year we’ve seen an increase. One year we jumped from about 700 to 800. Last year we had an increase of about another 100. Schools are asking if we can provide more food because they see an increase in enrollment. We have had a gradual increase every year, but we must tell schools that we can’t serve more than 1,000 students right now.”
The demand is difficult for Chili for Children to keep up with, but they work hard to make sure as many children as possible get the food they need to succeed in school. The staff are dedicated and committed to feeding the children. Beyond the six staff that keeps the organization running smoothly, having reliable vehicles and equipment is key to their mission. Stevenson explains how important their vans are to their operations and talks to how they navigate aging vehicles in need of repair.
“We take very good care of our vehicles, because if they break down, we have no way to transport the food and feed the children. When our van recently broke down, we could not fix it right away because we didn’t have the funding to do it. Luckily, our donors understand the importance of our transportation and what it means to deliver our food and we were able to secure funding to fix the vehicle. We relied on an older backup van during this time to make sure we continued to feed the community, ...”
Chili for Children staff travel from one end of Regina to the other daily, for purchasing food, picking up donated foods and to deliver the hot meals to the schools. They also sometimes travel between Regina and Lumsden to gather food. While they see the challenge to feed children rising due to increased cost of food, they are optimistic that they will continue to feed as many children as possible, giving them the nourishment needed to be engaged students
