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NORTH SHORE SPECIALIST
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Pat Kavanagh 250-319-7938
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z | Page 5 Volume 14 Number 26 | 50¢
BEST-WEST REALTY LTD.
July 1, 2015
Gleaning Abundance gleans volunteers You may know about the Kamloops Gleaning Abundance Program (GAP) hosting an amazing garden tour, you may have even read it here in the Echo last week. The tour is scheduled to start downtown and participants will see several types and styles of gardens in various locations both downtown and in Batchelor Heights. It is a great opportunity to take a scenic stroll through the blooming community of Kamloops with some knowledgeable, community minded people making a difference with a little hard work and a green thumb. While on the tour, ask a volunteer what GAP is all about and don’t be surprised to find yourself asking what you can do to assist this compassionate, brilliant initiative. Kamloops is blessed with an abundance of fruit trees of many varieties. All too often the tree owners don’t want or need the fruit but would rather see the ripe fruit used than left to compost on the ground. It can become an issue for the tree owner when insects and wildlife come to clean up the leftovers or the neighbourhood relations become strained from the odoriferous emanation coming from their yard. The GAP is a food security initiative which brings volunteers to Kamloops homes to harvest fruit that the occupants are unable or unwilling REALTOR
to pick themselves. The gleaned fruit is then divided among the owner, volunteers and a designated social agency. In 2014, the
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This program has been essential to Kamloops by preventing food waste, providing free produce to local food outreach programs and keeping your neighbourhood free of insect and bearattracting unpicked fruit.
GAP gleaned nearly ten thousand kilograms of fruit that might otherwise have gone to waste. Much of that fruit was handed over to the Kamloops Food Bank for distribution, to other food outreach programs and to community kitchens where it was canned or made into jam, salsa, or chutney, and shared with volunteers and their families. The GAP helps ensure that good healthy food does not go to waste and yet this organization does so much more. The initiative becomes a powerful resource and a community orga-
Cherries are the first fruit to be gleaned.
nizational tool that provides the catalyst for improving community food security. Fifteen local organizations received donations of fresh fruit from the GAP last year and 200 volunteers took part in the program, contributing over 500 hours of their time. The GAP conducted 104 harvests from July to October in all parts of the city and now they are looking for a few responsible volunteers to become harvest leaders for this year’s gleaning. There are some pretty awesome benefits to becoming a harvest leader with the GAP, for instance, you can choose your harvests, gain valuable leadership experience, meet lots of interesting people and the GAP offers a chance to win some impressive prizes. The best part about volunteering though is the immeasurable sense of civic pride you receive when you can give back to the community you love. Community organizations and neighbourhood associations can get involved by forming their own group of friends or neighbours who work independently to pick fruit in their own part of the city and look after the delivery of the donated portion of the harvest. The GAP coordinator will come out to do an orientation on your first harvest party, and after - continued on page 2
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