Vancouver Market Support

Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank (GVFB) and provide direct food support to those in need! Volunteers will play a key role in restocking the shelves with fresh, frozen, and pantry items. This is a great opportunity to practice the FIFO method, reduce food waste, and directly contribute to supporting the community.  Duties include a quality check and sort of perishable (fresh) and non-perishable (dry) deliveries before restocking shelves; efficiently organize food to ensure proper placement and easy access; rotating items based on first in, first out (FIFO) method; and ensuring areas are well stocked, merchandised and the area is swept and kept clean. 

The Greater Vancouver Food Bank was set up as a temporary relief to the hunger crisis in 1983 and has grown significantly in the four decades since then. Today the GVFB provides assistance to approximately 15,000 individuals monthly across Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, and the North Shore. The GVFB provides food support to a network of 140+ Community Agencies. These organizations use GVFB food to fuel their food programs, including small community food banks, daily snack and meal programs for shelters and community housing, school nutrition programs, and more.

Prepare a Packaged Meal 

Help A Loving Spoonful prepare and package a meal! Volunteers will portion out meals (such as mashed potatoes with vegetables and chicken breast or a pasta dish), professionally seal the packages, then label and divide the meals into crates to be frozen. Frozen meals that are microwaveable are a huge benefit to individuals living in low income housing as they may not have more than a microwave or a hot plate. There is less waste with frozen meals and they are also very easy for people with low mobility to prepare.

The address doesn’t have a A Loving Spoonful sign but there is a bright red awning above the storefront. Their staff will unlock the front gate, so please go in through those gates. Please note this address is not associated with A Loving Spoonful on maps so you must enter 461 Powell Street to get directions to this location.

Parking: Free street parking on the side streets (Jackson, Dunlevy), and paid street parking on Powell Street.

Dress Code: Please wear long hair up and out of your face, wear comfortable closed toe shoes and clothes you don’t mind getting dirty.

A Loving Spoonful is a volunteer-driven, not-for-profit organization that provides free, nutritious meals to people living with HIV and co-existing illness in Metro Vancouver and the surrounding areas. The past couple of years they have grown as an organization and are now making their own meals at a local kitchen, and packaging them into individual containers to freeze at their warehouse at 1449 Powell Street. A Loving Spoonful also supports various low income housing initiatives by providing subsidized meals.

Vancouver Food Distribution

Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank (GVFB) and provide direct food support to those in need! In this role, you will focus on the flow of operations and be quite active during your shift. Tasks include line management, restocking supplies, distributing menu items, program packs, and cleaning duties. Experience a fast-paced, front-line role that directly supports the community!
Excellent team building activity!

The Greater Vancouver Food Bank was set up as a temporary relief to the hunger crisis in 1983 and has grown significantly in the four decades since then. Today the GVFB provides assistance to approximately 15,000 individuals monthly across Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, and the North Shore. The GVFB provides food support to a network of 140+ Community Agencies. These organizations use GVFB food to fuel their food programs, including small community food banks, daily snack and meal programs for shelters and community housing, school nutrition programs, and more.

Stanley Park Stewardship

Join the Stanley Park Ecology team for an afternoon of park stewardship. Learn about local ecology and the important role of conservation and stewardship in Stanley Park, be active environmental stewards in one of Canada’s most beautiful urban parks, enjoy a fun and comfortable team-building experience, and contribute directly to long-term habitat conservation and enhancement.

The meeting point is Prospect Point Lookout. From the Prospect Point parking lot, volunteers, along with the SPES staff, will walk to the nearby worksites. The meeting point has paid parking, a public washroom, drinking fountain, and a café.

Stanley Park Ecology will provide:
• All necessary tools, gloves and equipment for the duration of the event
• On site plant identification training and invasive removal techniques.

Stanley Park Ecology Society (SPES) – a registered charity since 1988 – is the primary provider of land-based education interpretive services in Stanley Park. SPES’s role in the stewardship of Stanley Park is undertaken through a combination of: education, conservation action, and research.

Ocean Wise Shoreline Cleanup - Jericho Beach to Spanish Banks

Join your colleagues for some fresh air and sunshine while helping to reduce the amount of litter that ends up in our ocean. Gloves, garbage bags, pickers, etc provided. 

Ocean Wise Shoreline Cleanup is a conservation program that provides Canadians across the country the opportunity to take action in their communities wherever water meets land, one bit of trash at a time. Each year, more than 67,000 kilograms of trash is removed from over 1,400 kilometers of shoreline.

Spring Clean of Outdoor Area & Gardens!

Volunteers will engage in a spring cleaning of the outdoor area & gardens of Crabtree Corner Early Learning and Child Care. Crabtree Corner is a free licensed childcare for low income families living in the downtown eastside. It is operated by the YWCA BC to provide high-quality and affordable child care to meet families’ needs.

We deliver a play-based curriculum and our staff are licensed Early Childhood Educators, registered to practice in the province of British Columbia with the ECE registry. Our educators also have specialized certificates in infant-toddler and special needs training, as well as first aid, CPR and Food Safe.

YWCA BC operates multiple licensed child cares in Metro Vancouver, all of which are committed to $10 a day or free services. We recognize that affordable child care is essential to the economic stability of single mothers. We prioritize single mothers and YWCA program participants in all of our child cares. Two very special programs within our child cares are at Emma’s, where we provide supportive programming for teen parents who are working towards completing high school, and at Crabtree Corner, where we provide free child care for mothers in the downtown eastside, to allow them to attend medical appointments, legal appointments, parenting programming and job interviews.  

As you know, YWCA BC serves individuals with intersecting barriers, who may struggle with homelessness, unemployment, institutionalized racism, substance use disorder and intimate partner violence.

Charlie's Pet Food Bank!

Volunteers will help organize and distribute essential pet food and supplies to community members and their animals at Charlie’s Pet Food Bank in the Downtown Eastside. 

Charlie’s pet food bank provides free and low-cost pet services for people who are homeless, living outdoors, low-income and senior pet guardians in downtown Vancouver.

This community-based initiative was created to improve the lives of pets living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Launched in 2000 by the BC SPCA’s Chief Animal Health Officer at the time, Dr. Jamie Lawson, and the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, Charlie’s is named after a starving dog that came into our animal hospital in critical condition. Sadly, we weren’t able to save Charlie, and he passed away after three weeks of intensive care.

Items distributed weekly

• Pet food – dog, cat (dry and wet) and small pet
• Cat and dog treats
• Cat litter
• Cat litter boxes
• Toys – dog, cat and small pet
• Collars, harnesses and leashes
• Dog coats
• Beds
• Pet carriers

The mission of the BC SPCA  is to enhance the quality of life for all domestic, farm and wild animals. We are the largest animal welfare organization of our kind in North America and the largest animal sheltering society in the world. 

Raymond James Kits for a Cause - Hygiene Kit Build for A Better Life Foundation - IN HOUSE!

Join us in the 6th floor Training Room for a Raymond James Kits for a Cause Build benefitting A Better Life Foundation. The hygiene kits (14 items) are travel-sized items and packed into a ziplock bag, which is a great option to make the Kit waterproof and easy for charities to distribute to their clients.

A Better Life Foundation believes in radical spaces for inclusion, we make good, honest food that helps our community, and believe in generous hospitality. Our daily meal program, Plenty of Plates, is the cornerstone of our work. Preparing, cooking, packaging, and delivering 1,800 scratch made meals to the residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 

We support our city’s most marginalized folks in their journey towards upward mobility. Starting with food security, we strive to make a direct and meaningful difference by providing meals, meaningful employment, training, education and taking climate change actions since 2013.

Volunteers will support VOKRA's cats by sorting and bagging cat food for their community food bank, cleaning cat trees,  testing water fountains, sorting and organizing supplies and hauling boxes/items/tables from storage rooms to our loading bay

VOKRA's mission is to end cat overpopulation and cat homelessness.  We rescue, heal, then home cats - first in our network of foster homes, then in carefully matched, loving, forever homes. We are a passionate, volunteer-driven charity with extensive cat care experience. We believe that no-kill is the only responsible approach, that TNR works, and that cats are awesome!

Charlie's Pet Food Bank!

Volunteers will help organize and distribute essential pet food and supplies to community members and their animals at Charlie’s Pet Food Bank in the Downtown Eastside. 

Charlie’s pet food bank provides free and low-cost pet services for people who are homeless, living outdoors, low-income and senior pet guardians in downtown Vancouver.

This community-based initiative was created to improve the lives of pets living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Launched in 2000 by the BC SPCA’s Chief Animal Health Officer at the time, Dr. Jamie Lawson, and the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, Charlie’s is named after a starving dog that came into our animal hospital in critical condition. Sadly, we weren’t able to save Charlie, and he passed away after three weeks of intensive care.

Items distributed weekly

• Pet food – dog, cat (dry and wet) and small pet
• Cat and dog treats
• Cat litter
• Cat litter boxes
• Toys – dog, cat and small pet
• Collars, harnesses and leashes
• Dog coats
• Beds
• Pet carriers

The mission of the BC SPCA  is to enhance the quality of life for all domestic, farm and wild animals. We are the largest animal welfare organization of our kind in North America and the largest animal sheltering society in the world. 

Spring Clean of Outdoor Area & Gardens!

Volunteers will engage in a spring cleaning of the outdoor area & gardens of  Emma’s Early Learning and Child Care. Emma's is a $10 a day child care with a focus on supporting teen parents in the Vancouver School District. 

We deliver a play-based curriculum and our staff are licensed Early Childhood Educators, registered to practice in the province of British Columbia with the ECE registry. Our educators also have specialized certificates in infant-toddler and special needs training, as well as first aid, CPR and Food Safe.

YWCA BC operates multiple licensed child cares in Metro Vancouver, all of which are committed to $10 a day or free services. We recognize that affordable child care is essential to the economic stability of single mothers. We prioritize single mothers and YWCA program participants in all of our child cares. Two very special programs within our child cares are at Emma’s, where we provide supportive programming for teen parents who are working towards completing high school, and at Crabtree Corner, where we provide free child care for mothers in the downtown eastside, to allow them to attend medical appointments, legal appointments, parenting programming and job interviews.  

As you know, YWCA BC serves individuals with intersecting barriers, who may struggle with homelessness, unemployment, institutionalized racism, substance use disorder and intimate partner violence.

Spring Clean of Outdoor Area & Gardens!

Volunteers will engage in a spring cleaning of the outdoor area & gardens of  Citygate Early Learning and Child Care. Citygate is a $10 a day child care program. 

We deliver a play-based curriculum and our staff are licensed Early Childhood Educators, registered to practice in the province of British Columbia with the ECE registry. Our educators also have specialized certificates in infant-toddler and special needs training, as well as first aid, CPR and Food Safe.

YWCA BC operates multiple licensed child cares in Metro Vancouver, all of which are committed to $10 a day or free services. We recognize that affordable child care is essential to the economic stability of single mothers. We prioritize single mothers and YWCA program participants in all of our child cares. Two very special programs within our child cares are at Emma’s, where we provide supportive programming for teen parents who are working towards completing high school, and at Crabtree Corner, where we provide free child care for mothers in the downtown eastside, to allow them to attend medical appointments, legal appointments, parenting programming and job interviews.  

As you know, YWCA BC serves individuals with intersecting barriers, who may struggle with homelessness, unemployment, institutionalized racism, substance use disorder and intimate partner violence.

Prepare a Packaged Meal 

Help A Loving Spoonful prepare and package a meal! Volunteers will portion out meals (such as mashed potatoes with vegetables and chicken breast or a pasta dish), professionally seal the packages, then label and divide the meals into crates to be frozen. Frozen meals that are microwaveable are a huge benefit to individuals living in low income housing as they may not have more than a microwave or a hot plate. There is less waste with frozen meals and they are also very easy for people with low mobility to prepare.

The address doesn’t have a A Loving Spoonful sign but there is a bright red awning above the storefront. Their staff will unlock the front gate, so please go in through those gates. Please note this address is not associated with A Loving Spoonful on maps so you must enter 461 Powell Street to get directions to this location.

Parking: Free street parking on the side streets (Jackson, Dunlevy), and paid street parking on Powell Street.

Dress Code: Please wear long hair up and out of your face, wear comfortable closed toe shoes and clothes you don’t mind getting dirty.

A Loving Spoonful is a volunteer-driven, not-for-profit organization that provides free, nutritious meals to people living with HIV and co-existing illness in Metro Vancouver and the surrounding areas. The past couple of years they have grown as an organization and are now making their own meals at a local kitchen, and packaging them into individual containers to freeze at their warehouse at 1449 Powell Street. A Loving Spoonful also supports various low income housing initiatives by providing subsidized meals.

Vancouver Market Support

Volunteers are the lifeblood of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank (GVFB) and provide direct food support to those in need! Volunteers will play a key role in restocking the shelves with fresh, frozen, and pantry items. This is a great opportunity to practice the FIFO method, reduce food waste, and directly contribute to supporting the community.  Duties include a quality check and sort of perishable (fresh) and non-perishable (dry) deliveries before restocking shelves; efficiently organize food to ensure proper placement and easy access; rotating items based on first in, first out (FIFO) method; and ensuring areas are well stocked, merchandised and the area is swept and kept clean. 

The Greater Vancouver Food Bank was set up as a temporary relief to the hunger crisis in 1983 and has grown significantly in the four decades since then. Today the GVFB provides assistance to approximately 15,000 individuals monthly across Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, and the North Shore. The GVFB provides food support to a network of 140+ Community Agencies. These organizations use GVFB food to fuel their food programs, including small community food banks, daily snack and meal programs for shelters and community housing, school nutrition programs, and more.

Ronald McDonald House - Cooking or baking a Family Lunch at our Family Room at Surrey Memorial Hospital 
 
Come prepare a meal with the support of our Family Room Manager who provides the ingredients and recipes!  Having a day off from cooking is a huge relief for the 58 families who stay at Ronald McDonald House BC and Yukon Family Room at Surrey Memorial Hospital each night. It’s more than just a meal, you help create a feeling of home – a priceless feeling for our families who are far from the comfort of their own homes.

RMH BC is a place filled with hope and love, built on the belief that keeping the family together is an essential part of healing children with serious illnesses. When a child is seriously ill, the specialization required for their major medical procedure may only be available far from home. Treatment for illnesses such as leukemia, brain tumors or cystic fibrosis requires lengthy out-of-town hospitalization. RMH BC & Yukon provides accommodation for these families, so they can be close to their seriously ill children undergoing treatment. 

Plenty of Plates Meal Prep & Service

Volunteers will participate in Plenty of Plates, a community meal event hosted by A Better Life Foundation at the iconic Save-On-Meats diner on Hastings Street. Together we will cook a nutritious and delicious 3 course meal for 80 people living in the Downtown Eastside. It’s a unique and meaningful volunteer experience to connect and give back as a team.

A Better Life Foundation aims to nourish the Downtown Eastside and beyond with compassion and dignity; providing restaurant quality meals while breaking down the stereotypes and stigmas that so often flatten out the vibrancy of our beautiful neighbourhood.

Plenty of Plates is a key driver of these efforts.

A Better Life Foundation believes in radical spaces for inclusion, we make good, honest food that helps our community, and believe in generous hospitality. Our daily meal program, Plenty of Plates, is the cornerstone of our work. Preparing, cooking, packaging, and delivering 1,800 scratch made meals to the residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 

We support our city’s most marginalized folks in their journey towards upward mobility. Starting with food security, we strive to make a direct and meaningful difference by providing meals, meaningful employment, training, education and taking climate change actions since 2013.

Charlie's Pet Food Bank!

Volunteers will help organize and distribute essential pet food and supplies to community members and their animals at Charlie’s Pet Food Bank in the Downtown Eastside. 

Charlie’s pet food bank provides free and low-cost pet services for people who are homeless, living outdoors, low-income and senior pet guardians in downtown Vancouver.

This community-based initiative was created to improve the lives of pets living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Launched in 2000 by the BC SPCA’s Chief Animal Health Officer at the time, Dr. Jamie Lawson, and the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, Charlie’s is named after a starving dog that came into our animal hospital in critical condition. Sadly, we weren’t able to save Charlie, and he passed away after three weeks of intensive care.

Items distributed weekly

• Pet food – dog, cat (dry and wet) and small pet
• Cat and dog treats
• Cat litter
• Cat litter boxes
• Toys – dog, cat and small pet
• Collars, harnesses and leashes
• Dog coats
• Beds
• Pet carriers

The mission of the BC SPCA  is to enhance the quality of life for all domestic, farm and wild animals. We are the largest animal welfare organization of our kind in North America and the largest animal sheltering society in the world. 

Ronald McDonald House - Cooking or baking a Family Lunch at our Family Room at Surrey Memorial Hospital 
 
Come prepare a meal with the support of our Family Room Manager who provides the ingredients and recipes!  Having a day off from cooking is a huge relief for the 58 families who stay at Ronald McDonald House BC and Yukon Family Room at Surrey Memorial Hospital each night. It’s more than just a meal, you help create a feeling of home – a priceless feeling for our families who are far from the comfort of their own homes.

RMH BC is a place filled with hope and love, built on the belief that keeping the family together is an essential part of healing children with serious illnesses. When a child is seriously ill, the specialization required for their major medical procedure may only be available far from home. Treatment for illnesses such as leukemia, brain tumors or cystic fibrosis requires lengthy out-of-town hospitalization. RMH BC & Yukon provides accommodation for these families, so they can be close to their seriously ill children undergoing treatment.