Community Lunch Program

Drop in to our bi-monthly community lunches at the Legion, every second and fourth Tuesday of the month, from 11:30 – 1:00pm!

We serve hot soup, artisan breads, dessert and tea and coffee.

With volunteer resources at a premium, sometimes it hard to get people to step up to help with yet another “GREAT” idea to make Bowen a more interesting and caring place to live. But when Seniors Keeping Young partnered with Caring Circle to create a community lunch program and found funding to support the idea, three other similarly interested organizations jumped into the mix to broaden the scope of the program to truly make this a dynamic and sustainable ‘social gathering’ opportunity for the community.

Seniors Keeping Young (SKY), Caring Circle, The Little Red Church, the Legion, and Snug Cove House are working together to offer a community lunch program.

Here’s the genesis of our lunch program…

Caring Circle, on behalf of SKY, applied for a New Horizons Grant to support the program and that application was successful. On that note, none of this could have happened if Maxine Alcock hadn’t offered her services to Caring Circle a year ago wanting to “cook for seniors”. It was the same week that Sky and Caring Circle were in their first talks about the potential for a lunch program. ..serendipity!

Maxine has been providing wonderful soups since September 2014 as we were doing a trial run to see if the idea had traction. We’ve worked out the kinks and are now ready to seamlessly provide lunch for the community.

This program addresses many of the needs of the community and fulfills some of the goals of all of these organizations. Caring Circle is concerned about isolated community members and hopes that this might be a way for socialization that could lead to a better quality of life for some Islanders. The Little Red Church is always wanting to reach out to those who would benefit from the company and care of others. The Legion has been looking for ways to increase their programming and reach out to more community members. Bowen Island Community Recreation is eager to better connect with Seniors. So someone from Community Rec will be attending every lunch and help facilitate any number of quiet but fun activities eg. pool, shuffleboard, darts, poker, crib, checkers, chess and whatever imaginative games they might concoct depending on the group in attendance. And of course SKY was initially very concerned about falling numbers and what seemed a branding problem – it seems no one’s old enough to attend SKY programming! Also their programs were primarily attended by women, their numbers were dwindling and their capacity to carry on with their mandate was at risk. Organizing an activity that might attract more men was important to the organization as well as having something new to offer the community to build their volunteer capacity.

The other exciting component for all of the community partners was to make this event open to all adults on Bowen, not just seniors. Other communities have lunch programs and they’re generally offered for adults of any age. Mixed demographics is often a recipe for a richer experience for all.

Please come along and meet your neighbours, make new friends and have some lively conversation. This could be fun…