With the arrival of December comes the launch of Mission 31 at Sudbury's Elgin Street Mission.
Mission 31 is the annual month-long fundraiser and awareness spearheaded by the Rotary Club of Sudbury Sunrisers to provide hot meals — and raise funds — for those who need one for every day in December.
Each year, the Sunrisers partner with local businesses and community volunteers to provide evening meal services at the Elgin Street Mission. Teams of six provide donations of both time and money to provide meal prep, service and clean-up to cover off each of the 31 nights in December.
Once again this year, Day Construction has come on as a corporate partner, providing matching funds to what the teams raise during the Sunrisers campaign. Last year, the campaigns raised $50,000 to support the operation of the Mission.
Rev. Amanda Labreche, the executive director at the Mission, explained how the Sudbury Sunrisers got involved.
"They decided a few years ago to have an initiative where we serve a hot meal like we do every night at the Elgin Street Mission, and ask community sponsors to donate to that," said Labreche. She said Rotary has already raised thousands of dollars to keep the initiative going.
"And then, of course, we have a matching sponsor from Day Construction who has been very generous to the Elgin Street Mission, absolutely," she added.
Labreche added that different community groups are invited in each day to help meet the clients, serve the meals and help with clean-up. She said the response has been outstanding.
"People are very generous with their time, especially here in Sudbury,” Labreche said. “It's the holiday season — people want to give back — and so finding people to serve for 31 days has been easy. We actually do not have enough days. We had to open up breakfast, so that's a good problem to have. I call it good problems."
She added that the demand for meals has increased every month, indicating more and more people are in poverty and so more people need to be fed as the need continues.
"It's always going up. And of course, we're serving a lot more young families than ever before, with the cost of living going up more, we're seeing those young families, and so we serve between on a regular night, we usually aim for 200,” Labreche said. “On other nights sometimes that's 250, so there are increases. Of course, it's very cold out tonight, and so with the temperatures dropping, we will see more people wanting to access."
She added that she was pleased with the generosity of the community at large.
"You know, to raise $1,000 a night and then to have a very generous company to match that, it's amazing,” Labreche said. “For what our people are going through, for the crisis that really we're in right now in Sudbury, it's amazing to see that when you need community support, Sudbury is there to give back.”
Len Gillis is a reporter at Sudbury.com.