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Burnaby temple part of new outreach program helping DTES

A Chinese temple in Burnaby has partnered with a handful of other businesses across the Lower Mainland to help residents living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The Tian-Jin Temple, located at 3426 Smith Ave.
Vancouver Outreach Program
Youth volunteers made more than 300 sandwiches on Oct. 8 at the Tian-Jin Temple in Burnaby as part of the new Vancouver Outreach Program. The bi-weekly initiative seeks to feed and clothe the homeless population living in the Downtown Eastside.

A Chinese temple in Burnaby has partnered with a handful of other businesses across the Lower Mainland to help residents living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

The Tian-Jin Temple, located at 3426 Smith Ave., is part of a new project called the Vancouver Outreach Program, which seeks to feed the homeless population in that area on a bi-weekly basis.

The “umbrella initiative,” which had its official launch the weekend of Oct. 8, is not a registered non-profit, but a group of companies banding together. Prizm Media provides the financial support, FOCUS offers its marketing services, the Adai Nerdy Network Foundation uses volunteer connections and Refood Canada repurposes food that is 24 hours old from grocery stores like Save-On-Foods. The temple is then used to prepare the food Saturdays – some 300 sandwiches were assembled during the launch – and it’s distributed the next day out of Carnegie Community Centre at Main and East Hastings streets.

Jeffrey Yu, the temple’s operations manager, told the NOW getting involved was an easy decision.

“Our motto is to save, to help and to enlighten people. We want to help people meet their very basic needs. You cannot better yourself if you are worried about a roof over your head or your next meal,” he said. “You just don’t have that energy to move forward.”

Yu added the temple supports Burnaby's Task Force on Homelessness and is involved with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, raising 25,000 pounds of food last year, and hoping to break 35,000 pounds this year.

“So when Jacquoline approached us regarding this initiative, it’s essentially almost a step up. We’ve being doing something similar. Now we’re providing people with food rather than going through the food bank,” he said.

Jacquoline Martin, the program’s director, got the idea to start the outreach initiative after doing something on a smaller scale with Prizm Media’s Zeeshan Hayat. After meeting with Yu, the pair decided the program should be bi-weekly and youth-driven.

“It was tremendous. It was insane,” the New Westminster resident said of the turnout on Oct. 8 and 9, noting there were 60 people on Saturday and 150 people on Sunday. “I guess a lot of people are so sick of seeing the Downtown Eastside just left in such a devastating state. They just really want to get involved with something.”

The goal is to distribute more than 600 articles every outing, about 400 food items and some 200 goods, including newly purchased jackets, socks and ponchos. Starting in November, Refood Canada will be donating 10 boxes of food every preparation day, bringing the total units to well over 1,000, according to Martin. There have also been talks with Sysco about doing some hot meals throughout the week.

“It’s just kind of flourishing. It took off really quickly and I could not be happier,” she said.

Meanwhile, Yu said the inaugural event was an “eye opener” to a lot of the younger volunteers.

“They may not have been exposed to this type of population and for them to really have that connection and interaction, really opens their mind about the perceptions and stereotypes (around) homelessness. I thought that was really meaningful.”