Harvesting Hope: It's about people

One of my favourite broadcast days of the year is coming up this Friday, Dec.5:CBC Manitoba's Harvesting Hope.

It's a day of giving, live music and storytelling that results in our community coming together and raising money that will go toward Winnipeg Harvest and its member agencies across Manitoba.

• CBC Manitoba: Harvesting Hope
• Donate now to Harvesting Hope

It's about stocking the shelves so people don't have to ever feel what it's like to be hungry.

It's about helping our neighbours with basic needs.It's about people.It's about dignity.

It must have been 10years ago when I was sent to the Winnipeg Harvest building to interview Lee Newton.

Newton, who passed away earlier this year, was the original founder of Winnipeg Harvest.

• Winnipeg Harvest founder Lee Newton dies

When I met her,my first impression was of a well-dressed tall blonde woman with warm brown eyes and a soft way about her. She was smart looking without pretense.

I expected she would tell me how she went to New York City and learned about their distribution centre and brought the idea to Winnipeg in 1984.

I didn't expect that she would tell me how she ended up needing to use Winnipeg Harvest herself.Or perhaps,more significantly,that she at first had trouble accepting the help.

An ultimate example

Newton told me that even though she had set up the food bank with the intention that people would be able to get food without judgment, when her life took a turn for the worse,she had trouble not judging herself.

She was out of work after being a graphic designer for many years,dealing with some significant losses in her personal life and starting to hide herself away from the world.The thing is, she was also hungry.

Ultimately, with the encouragement of friends and family, she showed up at the food bank.

I've never forgotten Lee Newton sharing that story with me because it is the ultimate example of how hard we are on ourselves as human beings.

It is also the ultimate example that there really is no such thing as "the kind of people who need food banks" and "the kind of people who don't."

There are just people,and circumstances unpredictable life circumstances that are different for everyone.

Gerrie told me about her life's circumstances in the emergency food room at Winnipeg Harvest.That's where I met her volunteering her time helping people who literally walk in off of the street and need food right away.

She worked regularly with another woman in the room and they were almost like the Golden Girls.They were so funny and spirited,you might think they were handing out loot bags at a party.

Levity goes a long way

Gerrie understood that a little levity goes a long way when you're struggling.She first needed food from Harvest when she become a senior citizen.

Gerrie told me how paying both her rent and medication costs was getting tougher and tougher to do on a fixed income. Then she told me that she hadn't been sleeping in her apartment anyway.

Gerrie had been sleeping in her truck for weeks.

When I asked her why she looked down at her feet,her friend said it was because of the bedbugs.

Gerrie said it was true.She said that the months of feeling the bedbugs creeping and crawling on her body, and waking up with itchy bites, had pushed her to her limit.

I told her no one deserved to live like that.

I've also met some wonderful people at Winnipeg Harvest who made me smile from ear to ear.

One woman showed me her amazingly decorative nail polish.She said that she may need help,but she's going to have sparkly fingernails no matter what!

Another woman told me that people judge her for spending money on cigarettes while needing help from the food bank. She said, with a little laugh, that she used to smoke crack.In her world, smoking nicotine was an improvement.

Tough realities we all share

There are, however, some tough realities that we all share.

The most glaring one is that our province continues to have a huge problem with child poverty.

• Manitoba's child poverty rate 2nd-highest in Canada: report

To that end, I want to mention one more person who I have thought about a lot over years.

It was a man I met in the Winnipeg Harvest warehouse.He was pushing a pallet.

I actually just wanted him to do a station ID like, "You're listening to CBC,"but we ended up talking.He said that he volunteered his time at the food bank to give backbecause he was a client as well.

So I asked him, "What does it feel like to be hungry?"

His face immediately changed.At first I thought he was upset by the question or the reminder of the feeling of an empty stomach,but then he told me about his daughter.

She didn't know about Winnipeg Harvest.She didn't know because he had gone hungry for her.

He said that he gave her his portion of the food so she didn't ever have to feel what is like to yearn for a banana.A banana.That stayed with me for a very long time.

On Friday,we'll meet a few more people during Harvesting Hope who will tell us their stories.They will represent the thousands and thousands of others who we will never hear from.

That, however, doesn't mean we can't help them when they need us.

Join us for Harvesting Hope.