Grade 2 students at St Catherine Catholic School enjoy fresh smoothies prepared by volunteers (photos by Liam Verster)

By Liam Verster

Breakfast for kids

Pembina and Breakfast Club of Canada partnership will feed children across Canada

Nov 20, 2019 | 12:31 PM

Pembina Pipelines Corporation has partnered with the Breakfast Club of Canada, to help feed school children across the country. Pembina is donating $5-million over the next five years, to help provide fresh, nutritious, healthy meals to over 250,000 students in 1,800 schools, every single day.

To mark the partnership, volunteers met at St. Catherine Catholic School in Grande Prairie, where they blended up fresh, healthy smoothies for the students.

Senior Adviser for the Breakfast Club of Canada, Ben Neumer, says it’s a very important issue to address, and affects a lot of different children, all over the country.

“We’re feeding students in all walks of life, urban communities, rural communities, fly-in communities. Food security is a major issue in Canada, and collectively we need to get together and solve this issue and find a solution.”

The program feeds children in communities across the country, including in Grande Prairie. The Breakfast Club of Canada provides meals for almost 500 school children in six schools in the city, and four schools in the surrounding communities. Those schools provide breakfast five days a week that are nutritious, healthy, and contain at least three of the four food groups.

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Jodie Colbert, the District Manager for Pembina’s Deep Basin District, says it’s very exciting and important to partner with the organization.

“It’s been a pretty big commitment for Pembina. We always want to make an impression and have a net positive impact on the communities that we operate (in), and this is one of the ways we can do it.”

Colbert adds the partnership has a personal meaning for her as well. She has two children who attend day care, where they get healthy and nutritious breakfasts, and it makes a big difference in their health and daily life.

She says one in four children go to school hungry, and she’s glad that her company can provide some extra supports to make sure these kids are healthy and fed.

While it was just smoothies being served at St. Catherine, other children around the region are receiving full meals, courtesy of the Breakfast Club of Canada. Karie Prichard, the Executive Director of the Grande Prairie Catholic School District Education Foundation, says the 6 schools in the city, and the four in Sexsmith, Beaverlodge, Fairveiw and Spirit River, have community fridges that can be accessed by the students. The fridges are stocked with “grab-and-go” breakfast items, and in September they provided over 9,000 meals to local school children.

She says there are children going to school hungry all over the country, and there are lots of contributing factors that can lead to a child not receiving a proper meal.

“It’s not always a financial need. Sometimes it can be mental health, issues in the home, parents not able to get up in the morning to help prepare lunches. Or, especially in our community, a lot of parents are going out to work to the fields at 5 o’clock, 4 o’clock in the morning. A lot of students are younger, they are needing to get up on their own and having to try and find time to prepare lunches as well. So, this is just a really nice way that, whatever their need may be, that we don’t attach a stigma of it always being a financial need.”

Prichard says the $5-million is a huge donation that will make a serious impact on children all over the country, including kids in Grande Prairie. She adds that she really appreciates the work being done by the volunteers who help put together the meals for local students every day.

Prichard says she is also grateful of the Breakfast Club of Canada, who provides grants to buy the equipment and food for the children, and Pembina, for making this donation, and helping expand the work the organization can do to help feed children across the country.