Fresh Co bags meals for Agapè

Nick Seebruch
Fresh Co bags meals for Agapè
Pictured from left-to-right are: Johanne Couture

CORNWALL, Ontario – Fresh Co has decided to jump into the Agapè Centre’s One Bag Challenge in a big way.

The Agapè Centre launched the One Bag Challenge at the end of July. The challenge is to bring one bag of groceries to the Agapè Centre and to challenge your friends to do the same.

Agapè Centre Executive Director Diane Plourde said that the summer months are the most difficult for the Agapè Centre as they have the same number of people to support, but less donations. Particularly, the Agapè Centre was running low on canned meats, peanut butter, pasta and pasta sauce.

Fresh Co always has bins at the end of their cash lines where people can drop off food for the Agapè Centre, but they wanted to jump into the One Bag Challenge as well and get their customers involved. Customers have an opportunity to donate a $5 or $10 bag of groceries to the Agapè Centre that has been prepared by Fresh Co. The Agapè Centre will then come by and pick up the bags that have been donated.

Fresh Co is the only grocery store so far to join in the challenge.

“After talking with Diane, we have prepared bags of things that they really need at the Agapè Centre,” said store owner Jordan O’Brien. “Right now our $5 bags have back to school snacks in them for the kids.”

“What people don’t know,” she went on to say, “is that we do this all year- round.”

The campaign has been very successful so far. As of Aug. 8, the Agapè Centre was at 70 percent of their goal to collect 500 bags. Plourde estimates that they have collected nearly 4, 000 pounds of food.

“The response we’ve gotten is amazing and people are having so much fun with this,” she said. “The centre has added seven new clients this week, so the demand for our services is growing.”

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