Okanagan Gleaners was inspired by faith in 1994 when five couples from Oliver formed a non-profit society to help feed the world’s hungry with the excess abundance of the Okanagan Valley. The Gleaners collect excess fruit and vegetables from farmers that would otherwise be thrown away in land-fills. Volunteers at the Gleaners plant just outside Oliver clean up the produce, cutting out the spoiled parts, and dicing up the good parts. Then the produce is dehydrated and mixed into bags of soup mix or for bags of apple chips. Some 20 to 30 volunteers work each day at Okanagan Gleaners in the winter months with up to 60 or 70 in the summer when youth groups come to camp for a week. In 2013, the Gleaners produced enough mix for more than 5,000,000 servings of soup and more than 5,000 bags of apple chips.
The soup mix and apple chips are shipped all over the world to Africa, Asia, eastern Europe, and central and south America. Peggy Cumberbatch, a long time Gleaners volunteer, has been taking our soup mix to the Baja region of Mexico for about 5 years. She has worked with a number of mission groups and organizations such as the Erma Fenell Foundation, pastors Frank & Mary Kaiser formerly of Keremeos & Summerland, and the police chief in San Vincente, Mexico. Through her work the soup mix from Okanagan Gleaners has been given migrant workers camps, seniors centers, children at the Indian School in Punta Colonet, a group home for single mothers, Singof Souple, in San Vicente, an orphanage in Tijuana and a men’s rehabilitation center in Punta Colonet. Peggy says the soup is always received with much gratitude and for her it is a great blessing to see the faces of those receiving the soup and see the life changing affect it can have.
Okanagan Gleaners will be holding its Annual General Meeting on Monday May 19th at 2:00 PM at the Gleaners Plant just south of Oliver on Road 3 at Primrose Lane. The AGM will be followed by a Celebration Banquet at 4:30 PM at the Oliver Alliance Church just north of Oliver on Leighton Crescent.