Okanagan Gleaners Society was founded in the autumn of 1994 by a small group of Christian believers in the South Okanagan Valley, out of a growing concern for the hungry people of the world.

 

The original founders are:

Ted and Dorothy Hintz

Bob and Trish Ells

Dave and Eileen Schellenberg

Dwight and Amy Brown

George and Rose Fast

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Fruit and vegetable prices in the Okanagan were sorely depressed. Meanwhile, they saw good food being wasted, un-harvested in the fields and orchards. Confronted daily by media images of people starving in other countries they felt a responsibility to salvage this God-given abundance of food.

Thus, the vision for Okanagan Gleaners was born. With God’s leading they could save the surplus food and send it to the poor and needy! The gift of food would help extend the hands of missionaries reaching out to a hungry and dying world.

 

The Gleaners’ vision quickly became a reality. Many people joined the society. A local orchardist offered a small acreage with an old 1920’s tobacco-drying barn. Soon volunteers painted and renovated the building into a food-processing plant. Production began in July 1996. In the first-year vegetables were cleaned and diced by hand with a typical kitchen knife. That year 26,000 servings of dried soup mix were packaged and made ready for shipping.

 

The land was offered with buildings for sale in 2009 and this 4.1 acres and barn was purchased in 2011 for the price of $439,000 (funds donated by volunteers/donors).

Our society produces dried vegetable product that may contain cabbage, onions, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, beans, peas, split peas, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, turnips, eggplant, zucchini, pot barley, split peas, lentils, potatoes and salt.  Over one hundred million (100,000,000.)  servings have been produced since 1996 and distributed around the world.

 

The Okanagan Gleaners as a registered society, is exclusively supported by free will donations.

The backbone of the operation are the volunteers that show up daily to produce the dried vegetable soup mix.