The Hope Mission in Edmonton was founded in 1929 as a soup kitchen. After 80 years its purpose remains the same: to serve, strengthen and uplift men, women and children. Its programs target homelessness, physical and psychological violence, substance abuse, prostitution, crime, violence, gang prevention and poverty.

“Our annual business meeting is held near Christmas each year and several years ago we decided to use the opportunity of having many of our producers, industry partners, government and suppliers together in one room, to raise funds for a local charity,” says Jodi Bakke, director of policy and communications for Alberta Pork.

A different charity is chosen each year. This year, during the annual banquet, attendees had an opportunity to purchase 50/50 tickets for the opportunity to win a variety of gift packages and a cash prize. The proceeds were split between the winner and the Hope Mission, with $xxx raised for the charity.

“The money raised is used to purchase pork products,” says Ms Bakke. “That is, in turn, matched in pork products by four industry processors. They include Maple Leaf, Sunterra Meats, Olymel and Sturgeon Valley Pork.

“Our producers live and work in communities across this province and this is our way of giving back,” says Ms Bakke. “The support of our processors, who also employ many people in Alberta, makes this truly a pork community effort.”

Hope Mission executive director, Bruce Reith, has been involved with the charity since 1984 and over the past 20 years has seen the Mission grow from a single service ministry to a comprehensive social-case agency with over 190 employees and 1,600 volunteers.

He says this donation of pork products provides real benefit to people in desperate need of support, many of whom have no alternatives other than assistance of organizations such as Hope Mission.

“Besides our many programs, we provide over 50,000 meals to the hungry every month and provide another 8,000 meals to elementary students,” he says. “We are very pleased that Alberta Pork has chosen to support our work and on behalf of our clients, we offer our sincere thanks to the pork producers and their industry partners for this effort.”