Fundraiser Dinners

While supporting charitable organizations is always encouraged, the holiday season is one where giving to and supporting charity is highly encouraged.  In Canada, food insecurity is one of the largest growing social issues.  A surprising number of Canadians go hungry daily.  At this time of year it is extremely important to support those organizations who help those who cannot help themselves and who through volunteerism give generously back to the community.

Many community service groups hold fundraiser dinners to help them raise funds to give back to the community.  Service groups have a kitchen that is stocked and manned by members and/or volunteers (aka family of members) during service group events. A lot of times the food itself is donated by members or others in the community.  In today's busy world, it is very difficult to get volunteers to help with these events and harder still to get donations to help support the causes.

"Tis the season for all kinds of fundraiser dinners.  We went to one of the local fish fries hosted by a local community service club.  We know these guys so they are used to seeing me and my camera.  I took a few pictures of some of their equipment but I thought this wall of kitchen utensils said it all.  This is a very small community service club too!  Obviously a good portion of their fundraising is done via hosting community dinner events.

This particular community group is well known for it's locally caught perch and pickerel dinners.  They hold wild game dinners (eg. muskrat) and used to host turtle dinners but that's become a bit complicated due to the changing environmental legislation.  Every single person working the dinners is a member (aka volunteer) or a family/friend (aka volunteer) so it is quite impressive that they can consistently get the number of volunteers and donations required to put on these types of fundraisers.

The food at these types of fundraisers is about as close to good, old fashioned home cooking as you can get.  There is nothing fancy or pretentious about the food, it's just good food shared with great company.  These events really are all about the social aspect, the good food is just an added benefit!