The Ontario Christian Gleaners

Adrian Dieleman has been a volunteer with The Ontario Christian Gleaners since its inception in 2008. Their motto is, " Using Ontarios's surplus produce to feed the hungry". Over 750 volunteers help out each year with 40 - 80 at a time gathering each week day to sort, wash, dice, dry and package vegetables for distribution to needy areas such as Guatemala, Haiti, Ghana, Romania, Philippines and Sierra Leone to name just a few. Almost all the produce comes from growers with some coming from food processors and distributors.

Once the various vegetables are prepared and dried they are put together in fixed proportions to create a dried soup mix. These three pound bags are packaged four in a pail with 60 pails on a skid shrink wrapped together for world wide distribution. Once received the contents of each bag are placed in 25 L of water, soaked for 6 hours to rehydrate and then boiled for 1 h. After another 2 - 3 hours of simmering 100 bowls of soup are ready.

The plant is located at 1550 Morrison Road in Cambridge ON and Adrian says volunteers are always welcome. A shift is from 8:00 a.m. to noon and anyone from high school age up is welcome to just arrive at the plant to work.

One of the things they need are square plastic pails with matching lids in which the bags are shipped. The pails serve multiple duty once the soup mix is removed - from water haulers to cement mixers to tables. These types of pails can be found at the local deli, restaurant, coffee shop or any food preparation place.

Adrain indicated that the soup mix is given away at no cost and any expenses incurred are covered by church and community donations. For more information go to www.OntarioGleaners.org