Community Kitchen Program of Calgary (“CKP”) believes that we have the ability to help initiate change effecting food insecurity. We believe everyone should have access to healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food. This is a physical necessity, a human right and critical for people to fully participate in society.
CKP relies massively on its equipment to deliver our valuable programs to those who live in poverty. Our equipment allows us to reach hundreds of thousands of people each year, and without it we could not do our best, for their best. CKP now finds itself in desperate need of a new reach truck. This is a unit that is electric, and operates a lot like a fork lift. It is exceptionally versatile and able to work safely in all areas of our warehouse. This type of unit has the ability to reach into pallet racking double deep, into our freezer and coolers and main warehouse. It is needed where we cannot take a regular forklift in enclosed tight areas, coolers and freezers, and small aisles where regular forklifts need more room to maneuver. These reach trucks are very dependable and can easily handle the workload of a regular warehouse while being exceptionally versatile and cheaper in operational and maintenance costs. They are a great answer to the environmental concerns of today because they are fully electric.
Currently, we are using an older reach truck, but it is on its last legs. It breaks down and has issues more frequently now. When it is down it drastically influences our ability to deliver our programs. With a new Reach Truck, we will cement our ability to provide for our community in the most effective efficient way, reducing strain on staff and volunteers thus enabling us to provide more for our programs and expand them as needed. We anticipate being able to increase our outputs by more than 15-20% with this new machine while doing it safely. A Reach Truck is a necessary and irreplaceable piece of equipment for the effective and overarching support to all of our programs. It is a foundational tool in our operations.
Our Programs – How We Do It
Good Food Box | The Good Food Box makes top-quality, fresh food available in a way that does not stigmatize people, fosters community development and promotes healthy eating at an incredible savings.
Spinz-A-Round | We rescue food collected from local merchants and suppliers that may have been discarded for reasons not related to product life or quality and we distribute it to to our participating agencies that in turn supply to families around the city.
Calgary’s Cooking | This program give people the opportunity to plan and cook and take home 14 days of meals at a low cost. These are a collection of nutritious, budget friendly meals.
Welcome Home Hampers | This program is designed to help those coming out of transitional housing and homelessness. We provide a hamper designed to last a family for one month.
Souper Stars Program | The Souper Stars Program is a series of ten 70 minute classes, 1 class per week, taught to 30 different classrooms a year. The program is designed to teach children in grades 4 to 6 how to attain a safe and healthy lifestyle.
Tummy Tamers Program | The Tummy Tamers is special summer program providing food relief for July and August complementary to serve families impacted by this challenging time it is partnered with schools, City of Calgary social workers and community support workers who refer families to us.
For more information about our important programs please go to www.ckpcalgary.ca