By Sheldon Spackman

Big turnout for Red Deer’s ‘Coldest Night of the Year’ national walk for homelessness

Feb 24, 2018 | 7:28 PM

Red Deer was one of 120 communities across Canada on Saturday evening to help raise awareness and support for our community’s most vulnerable.

Hosted by the Mustard Seed, the ‘Coldest Night of the Year’ national walk for homelessness saw 169 walkers, 32 teams and 48 volunteers take part in Red Deer, raising $27,033 for Mustard Seed programs in the process.

Byron Bradley, Managing Director for the Mustard Seed in Central Alberta, says that’s up from 95 walkers last year and surpasses their $25,000 fundraising goal.

According to Bradley, all the money raised goes directly into their day-to-day operations.

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“One of our bigger programs is our School Lunch program,” says Bradley. “So every school day of the year with the amazing help from volunteers, we make and deliver up to 380 lunches every day. Also, we serve dinner every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”

Bradley says between their dinners and school lunch program, over 70,000 meals were made last year.

“Also, we have a wellness advocate that provides one-on-one care for people,” adds Bradley. “Helps them with resume, job-readiness, reconnect with family, potentially maybe connect with the mental health system if they need mental health supports. We have a spiritual care team that also helps people on-on-one and they run bible studies and prayer meetings and other ways of just connecting with people on-on-one on the front lines.”

Bradley estimates about 1,000 people per week come through their doors seeking help.

“Maybe they’re coming to look for a scarf or mitts on a cold day,” explains Bradley. “We’ve actually just recently run out of winter gloves and mitts and so people come to our door looking just to warm up, grab a cup of coffee or they come to see our Chaplin or see our advocate and of course attend our meals or different events.”

Participants in the walk on Saturday night were able to choose from either a 2K, 5K or 10K walk with the routes being where our city’s most vulnerable would walk.

“It goes along the river, it goes by Hope Mission,” explains Bradley. “They’ll open up their doors to be a rest stop on the event and it specifically goes by some different agencies that a lot of our folks experiencing homelessness would frequent on a regular basis.”

“We really want to open up people’s eyes exclaims Bradley. “We sure appreciate the financial support but this is more about awareness. We want to try to just let the community know there is a lot of hungry and hurting people in the community and it takes a whole community to care for its most vulnerable.”

To explore the numerous types of volunteer opportunities at the Mustard seed, visit www.theseed.ca.