This month, the Kamloops Food Bank has teamed up with the Kamloops Central BIA for the 5th annual Empty Bowls campaign, sponsored by RadioNL.

This is the 5th year of the fundraiser and the food bank’s Executive Director says it is going to be quite a bit different this year with 14 downtown restaurants taking part. One dollar from every bowl of soup purchased will go to support the food bank. Previous installments of the fundraiser saw bowls auctioned off in a one day event.

Speaking on The Jeff Andreas Show, Executive Director Bernadette Siracky says the people of Kamloops always come out strong and support this great cause. “I’m not surprised in general because Kamloops is a very generous city and when you create an opportunity for people to support you, they really do here. So, the restaurants that haven’t been involved before are really excited to be involved.”

Siracky says it helps to provide a critical service in our community. “We serve 7,000 individuals, 54 community agencies that make meals and we operate the largest food recovery program in BC, and that would be impossible without the support of this community.”

Siracky says now that we’re into the third month of the year, a lot of the holiday donations have been used up and it is time to re-stock the shelves. “I think what we’ve found in Kamloops is that people are very community driven, they’re very relationship based here, so when they come to the food bank and create a meaningful moment for themselves they tend to come back.”

Siracky says there is also a competition among chefs. People can go to the website and vote for their favourite soup and the chef with the most votes and most soup sold will get to claim the SOUPer Bowl trophy.

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