Credit Union provides $7,000 grant for SFCS community gardens and greenhouse.

Jeff Green | May 12, 2021

Southern Frontenac Community Services (SFCS) has received a grant to support the Community Garden and Greenhouse initiative that is part of its food program.

The grant is made of two portions. $5,000 comes from the Concentra Bank 2021 Empowering Your Community grant program. Concentra is the wholesale bank and trust company for Canada's Credit Unions, including the Kingston Community Credit Union (KCCU). The Empowering your community grant program is a $100,000 program providing three $10,000 grants and fourteen $5,000 grants to projects across Canada.

"Now more than ever, support for communities is important," says Don Coulter, President and CEO of Concentra Bank. "Our purpose is to enable success, and teaming up with credit unions, to empower communities, is a great way to do that." Southern Frontenac Community Services Corporation is a local organisation that provides a wide and varied range of health, social and cultural support programs, and services, to improve quality of life for residents of South Frontenac.”

KCCU applied for the Empowering Your Community Grant in support of SFCS, outlining the benefits the agency offers to the community. In addition to the $5,000 from the KCCU, an additional $2,000 is being donated directly by KCCU to support their greenhouse and gardens.

“The SFCS gardens help support South Frontenac residents in three ways,” said a KCCU press release regarding the grants.

“1. Food Support- The gardens provide fresh produce for the 75 food hampers distributed by the SFCS Food Bank to individuals and families monthly. 2. Food Support- The produce is added to the SFCS Hot Meals on Wheels program which currently delivers more that 175 nourishing hot meals to seniors each week. 3. Learning- The students from Loughborough Public School take part in weekly working visits to the gardens (as permitted by public health during Covid-19), where they learn how to plan, manage, and reap the benefits of a food garden and become vendors to sell excess produce to the public.”

Jon Dessau, the Chief Executive Officer of KCCU, said “SFCS is a very deserving recipient, and we are so pleased to help them with this initiative.”

“We received a call about this from Cathy Lavorato from the credit union in Kingston, because she knew about the work being done by volunteers with our garden program,” said David Townsend of SFCS. “We were more than happy to apply. With help from Alan Macdonald, who is the lead volunteer for the program and also anchors our partnership with Loughborough Public School, where he teaches, we made an application.

“With $7,000, thanks to the extra money from the KCCU, we will be able to purchase some much-needed equipment for the greenhouse and gardens, and some of the money will go into purchasing fruit trees for an orchard. That way the grant will have a long-term impact.”