A New Brunswick man who’s been growing his beard for five years says he’s willing to shave it all off if it will help others this holiday season.
John Moir says he’ll shave his face clean if New Brunswickers are able to raise $3,000 or more for Fredericton Community Kitchens.
He says he was inspired to complete the challenge after he starting serving at the kitchen.
“I have a spot in my heart for this kitchen,” he said.
“I usually try to do something this time of year to help the kitchen and the homeless.”
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All his fundraising efforts will go towards the Fredericton Community Kitchens’ student hunger program that served 70,000 lunches in 2018.
“It just is a huge help and takes a lot of the burden off of us to raise funds,” said Cassandra Blackmore, Fredericton Community Kitchens fundraising co-ordinator.
“We need to buy things like lunch meat, which isn’t something that can be donated. It’s something that we have to buy, and a lot of the meat that we use here in the kitchen also needs to be purchased.”
The student hunger program alone costs around $145,000 annually, and is almost completely community funded.
“We make 320 some meals a day, which go to 14 area schools,” said Mike Smith, Fredericton Community Kitchens operations manager.
“We have a backpack program where currently we are making 82 backpacks and they go home to kids with hungry families on weekends, and they bring them back empty on the Monday and we fill them up each week.”
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The community kitchen is also in need of volunteers to help prep meals and with service.
Including the student program, the community kitchens made around 160,000 meals last year, and they pride themselves on only serving gourmet.
“Our only mandate is to make sure we do restaurant-quality food that I would feed to the queen or my mother,” said Louis Cosman, a chef with Fredericton Community Kitchens.
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