Soup lovers turned out by the hundreds to sample some of North Bay’s finest soups at what has become an annual fundraising tradition.
Benefiting from the success of this year’s Soup’s On event was The Gathering Place, North Bay’s community kitchen.
“A dozen soups took part today with some restaurants and agencies who work with soup every day taking part. It gives them a chance to expose the community to what they do as far as putting their best foot forward. At the same time, it is a good fundraiser for us. We got around 300 people who came through here today. They all try the soup and then they vote on their favourite soups,” explained The Gathering Place’s Dennis Chippa.
While the event is always fun, it is serious business for participants vying for the coveted Golden Ladle award for top soup.
“We (Gathering Place) have won it a couple of years, but generally it is one of the commercial soups that everyone favours,” explained Chippa.
“Between sponsorship and attendance, we think we’re going to come in close to $15,000 which is about $6,000 more than we did last year, so we’re excited about that. The sponsorship was really great, and the community response was really good today as well. It was a lot of fun.”
The Gathering Place has been struggling financially as of late, but it continues to plug along.
“We’re holding our own. That’s basically what we’re saying, we’re holding our own. We’re getting through. We think making the budgetary changes we had to make, was important, it was successful. And it has managed to allow us to work our way through,” stated Chippa.
“Those changes were going down to one meal a day; we’re still focusing on outreach. We’re focusing on food, that is what we do.”
Board chair Peter Gregory agrees that things are slowly turning around for the volunteer soup kitchen.
“Today is better, every day we seem to be improving. Money is coming in which is what we really need. The staff are behind us 100 per cent. The board is behind us 100 per cent right now. We made some changes that I believe we needed to make. I believe we have a good future here, but it is day by day,” said Gregory.
“We need to have more money to fund more things, to make it better for the people we’re serving but also to make it better for the citizens of North Bay. Financially we’re out there pounding the beat. We’ve got a treasurer right now with 28 years experience in banking. We’re moving forward with him because he has some ideas we’re implementing, and we’re trying to make sure we’re very open and transparent. We have our financials up on the website right now,” stated Gregory.
“We need to run this as a business, and we are running it as a business now. The financials are not looking good for the last one, we’re working on getting our financials done for this year, it just ended in June. We’re looking at getting this year’s financials done and I think it is going to be a lot better.”
The Gathering Place received just over $90,000 in funding through two grants from the provincial government’s Ontario Trillium Foundation.
“The $92,000 in Ontario Trillium Foundation funding has allowed The Gathering Place to continue their mission of providing hot meals to people in need in our community,” shared Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli.
