Student volunteers hatch plan to feed hungry

A group of local volunteers are hoping t-shirts could be their key to helping the hungry.

They’ve started a campaign called feedfive to support the monthly meals they cook and serve at Ray of Hope. For every t-shirt sold, the group pledges to provide five full meals.

“Basically,” says volunteer Danny Aguizi, “one meal is made up of a small salad, the main course — which usually involves a type of meat and veggies, buttered bread, some sort of dessert — usually a small cookie, coffee or tea, and then a juice.”

The group has been volunteering at Ray of Hope for over two years. Aguizi, a fourth-year student at the University of Waterloo, started volunteering when his friend and roommate, Ian Reed, invited him to join:

“As university students, it’s really easy to be stuck in our little university bubble. We didn’t even know of Ray of Hope — the connection was my roommate’s church. After that, we kind of took it on and did our own thing.”

“For the guests, I know that the food we serve may be the only food they have on that given day,” says Reed, “and so I have come to realize that it is important to provide them with food that was made out of love rather than out of duty.”

Each time, they serve an average of 300 people.

Aguizi says after paying out of their own pocket for meal ingredients, the group wanted to find a way that they could sustain the program:

“We go every month, and we love it — it’s such an amazing experience. We wanted to keep doing it, and we wanted to do more of it, but the funding was always the problem.”

Along came the idea for feedfive.

“We wanted to be super-transparent, and we wanted to have people know exactly what they’re contributing,” says Aguizi.

All of the proceeds go towards the volunteer work — the bulk of it goes to paying for ingredients, and another portion covers costs such as shipping and packaging of the t-shirts.

“In the future, we want to be able to have special events where we can indulge a little more in the meal, so we’re saving a little on the side for that,” Aguizi adds.

If all goes well, the group’s plan in the future is to partner with other volunteer groups and help them too.

“We always think that to be able to have any kind of impact in the world, we need to be doing something huge,” Aguizi says.

“I think, [with] our little meals that we’re doing, we’re contributing a little bit.”