Niverville Helping Hands is partnering with Niverville Homegrown to provide fresh produce to their clients this summer.

Ashley Chamberlain from Niverville Helping Hands says a generous donor came to them this spring and offered to supply them with boxes of produce. She notes those types of donations can be hard to deal with because they have a short shelf life, but it got them thinking.

"How can we partner to provide more fresh produce to our folks? We have a lot of canned goods which are great because there are a lot of good things you can do with canned goods but we thought ‘is there a way to provide more choice and more fresh produce to our folks?’ We contacted Niverville Homegrown and said ‘this is what we want to do, is there a way we can accomplish this?’ Chantel who works there said ‘absolutely, let’s do that’"

Chamberlain says many of their clients have limited budgets when they go shopping so they don’t purchase items that will go bad. She notes it is incredibly exciting to be able to provide clients with vegetables by giving them coupons for the Niverville Homegrown stand thanks to generous donations.

"The person who originally approached us has given us a donation with the hope of having this come to fruition so we have some money that has been specifically donated. We would love to see the community giving donations specific to this cause because that would tell us what is important and if that is important for the community for us to provide that service we would love to continue doing so."

Chamberlain says they may also use money from their general operations fund to run this program and thanks the community and the Niverville M.C.C. for their continued support.