Donna Barker Communications

This is a story I wrote for Vancity in 2010. Part of a series of 18 stories about their grantees.

Vancity supports Your Local Farmer’s Market through grants and advice to help grow this social enterprise that brings food from the farms to your table.

Take a deep breath in through your nose.  As your chest expands, your head rises just a little, your eyes close and, it’s hard not to smile. Mmmm! Fresh peaches, picked just hours ago. And along with the sensational smell comes a flood of childhood memories of fruits and vegetables that smelled and tasted like nothing you find in the grocery store these days.

Tara McDonald, Executive Director of Your Local Farmers Market Society (YLFMS) says that “a peach, during peach season, will transform how anyone thinks about food.”

Tara has been Executive Director of YLFMS, which runs the Vancouver Farmers Markets, since 2005 and over the last four seasons has watched as visitors to the city’s farmers markets triple year-over-year. In 2009, over 250,000 people from all over the Lower Mainland made their way to farmers markets located throughout the city year-round.

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This is a story I wrote for Vancity in 2010. Part of a series of 18 stories about their grantees.

Can a calendar build community? Break down stereotypes about a neighbourhood? Improve lives? If that calendar is Hope in Shadows, then the answer is a resounding yes.

Vancity supports the work of the Hope in Shadows Society working to provide low-income individuals with training and employment through their social enterprise, the Hope in Shadows calendar.

Peter Thompson, a thirty-year resident of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, is no stranger to hard work. Originally from Boston Bar, Peter moved to Vancouver at twenty years old with his carpenter’s ticket and a desire to build a life on the coast. In 2006, an accident left Peter with his leg broken in five places, so badly that he needed to have his femur, shin bones and ankle all pinned back together. His three decades working as a carpenter came to an abrupt halt. For a man used to doing a hard day’s work, sudden unemployment – both the free time and the significantly reduced income – was a difficult adjustment.

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