The Lethbridge Bhutanese Seniors group hosted its annual Harvest Celebration at the Lethbridge College community gardens Friday, where hundreds of pounds of homegrown produce was donated to local food banks.
The Bhutanese Seniors group is a club comprised of former refugees who work to learn language and social skills in Canada.
Lethbridge Family Services says the Bhutanese population in Lethbridge has not let the difficulty of relocation hinder them. They share their love for gardening and planted a community garden at the Lethbridge College as a group several years ago.
Over the years, the harvest has been so bountiful that they have started donating it back to the community.
This year, the group donated some of the fresh veggies to the Lethbridge Food Bank, who says the donation will help with the over 700 families they feed monthly.
“A few of them are clients because of the economy – it’s very hard,” Lethbridge Food Bank Executive Director Debbie Woelders said. “They have grown a garden all summer. They’ve grown potatoes, tomatoes, onions, even a few pumpkins. What a great thing – we help them out and they help us out.”
Mon Maya Khati is one of the farmers in the group and was part of the harvest Friday. She told an interpreter that she was a farmer in Nepal and would like to spend the rest of her life farming.
“She just wants to help them, and the food bank. Wherever there is starvation issues, she just wants to give something to them,” interpreter Gita Mishra said on behalf of Khati.
Lethbridge Family Services said last year, the Bhutanese Seniors donated almost 1,000 pounds of food to the student run food banks at the Lethbridge College and the University of Lethbridge.
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