When the clock hits 8:30 am and the first bell rings at Greentree School, a lineup of up to one hundred students file through the second floor snack room to pick up breakfast and see Doreen Oliver.
And in just 15 minutes the food is gone, on Wednesday it was bagels and watermelon, and Oliver starts dishes and preps fruit for the next day’s morning rush.
The breakfast program at Greentree School sees up to a third of the school’s students each day come for a healthy meal to fuel their brains. The program, run on donations and volunteer time, is more important now than its been for a while.
“Times are tough, but at least we can guarantee that the kids are fed twice a day,” says Oliver. “We really want to make sure they’re taken care of.”
Oliver, 72, who retired from housekeeping in Continuing Care at the Drumheller hospital and began volunteering her days for the breakfast program four years ago, does the grocery shopping, creates the menus, fund raises door to door, and with the help of volunteers who come a few days a week, handles most of the cooking, cleaning, and prep work for the breakfast program.
“I went from the old ones to the young ones,” she laughs. “I saw a need for it and did it.”
Demand for the breakfast program has risen significantly since she started four years ago, when only about 30 kids would come to eat in the morning, now they regularly see over 100 coming for breakfast.
“Doreen was a saving grace when she came, I was doing a happy dance when she came,” said Amber Kennedy, who’s volunteered here for 6 years but juggles work and her own four kids while volunteering the mornings she can to the breakfast program.
Oliver has been a rock for the program, arriving at the school every single morning at seven and often volunteering the majority of her day to ensure everything runs smoothly.
But some mornings, like Wednesday, can be stressful and volunteers often can’t commit to be there every morning.
“We need more physical bodies here and we always need more money. Dollars are going up.”
Each single serving is budgeted to cost around 70 cents, and when they’re serving up to 100 portions a single day’s budget can reach $70.
And while the breakfast program feels costs rising and donation income dropping, so, too, are families in Drumheller feeling the pinch of this economy. It makes the breakfast program more important than ever.
“People are scraping their pockets more than ever now,” says Oliver.
“We don’t ask questions. Whoever wants to eat can eat,” Kennedy says, adding that there’s a negative stigma around students who use the breakfast program, but she firmly believes the program is not abused.
“They don’t come and take any food if they don’t need it.”
The breakfast program is asking for help to ensure the program continues to run. Donations and support, like the continual donation of fruit by Cenovus, and their $9,000 donation in 2013 which made Oliver cry, are needed in these times more than ever. Increased funds also allow budget space for healthier food options.
But there is no feeling that the project will fail any time soon, as long as volunteers like Oliver and Kennedy continue to put in their hours and energy to the project.
For Oliver, it’s all about the connection she has with the students she feeds.
“The kids will walk by the snack room door and give me a thumbs up, or see me in the street and say to their mom ‘That’s the lady who feeds me breakfast,’ and I know it’s worth it.”
