Today, I want to tell you the story of two remarkable Edmontonians: Bernie and Carol Kowalchuk. In December of 2001, they happened to read a column I had written in the Edmonton Journal about child poverty and about Sifton Elementary School in northeast Edmonton. Edmonton had a lunch program for the neediest elementary schools in the city, but Sifton was slightly too affluent to qualify. It had a mix of students: some comfortably middle class and others from struggling families. When the numbers were averaged out, Sifton didn’t make the cut for support.

I suspect plenty of people read my column that day, felt bad and turned the page — not Bernie and Carol. Bernie was a successful insurance man from suburban Sherwood Park. And he was a can-do guy, a grown-up farm boy who liked to fix things. So he called up a bunch of his friends, leaned a bit on a local grocery store and, presto, in just a few weeks Bernie and Carol — his wise and serene partner — put together their own privately funded, do-it-yourself lunch program for the Sifton kids who needed it most.

That was the beginning of Food for Thought. Today, almost 20 years later, the program operates in 15 Edmonton schools and provides breakfast, lunch and snacks to approximately 550 children every day. The program is unique because it quietly targets pockets of poverty that exist in middle-income neighbourhoods, helping kids who truly require support even if their school itself isn’t designated as high needs. And when schools were closed for COVID the program quickly adapted, delivering hampers to families who needed them.

Last month, Food for Thought hit a remarkable milestone: It served its one-millionth meal.

Bernie Kowalchuk, whose boyish, boundless enthusiasm created the program, died of cancer in 2010. But Carol and their daughters Kristine and Kelly are still the guiding spirits of Food for Thought, which they run in partnership with the Edmonton Public Schools Foundation. What a gift Food for Thought has been for thousands of Edmonton kids. What an inspiration to see what one family can do when they put their minds and their hearts to it.

So many of us see the social problems around us, and become paralyzed by their complexity. We freeze — wanting to help, but not knowing how.

Bernie wasn’t a big-picture guy. He didn’t try to “fix” child poverty. He and Carol just set out to see that a few hungry kids got a sandwich and a bowl of soup. They literally broke the problem into bite-sized pieces, and it worked. That should be food for thought for us all.

Thank you very much.