Jul 8, 2026 · 51 min · 12 segments
Bethany Ross is the Executive Director of Brown Bagging for Calgary's Kids, a community-driven organization dedicated to ensuring every child has access to the food they need to thrive. With more than…
Bethany RossGuest
Mark KondratHost
What is, what is the mission? Like what is the overall purpose of, of what you guys do and what you provide?
So brown bagging is work is to connect kids in Calgary to the food that they need.
Our biggest one and the program that we've been running for 20 odd years that we're kind of most well known for is our school lunch program.
So we provide a lunch every school day to just about 8,000 kids all across the city of Calgary funded entirely by donations from community.
We also do A similar program in the summer, we're working with day camps and providing kids in day camps here in the city that maybe don't have access to food or aren't bringing food for lunch, providing them lunches.
And then we also do a program where we're working with families who are experiencing food insecurity to help them to shift what's happening for their family.
And so providing them with grocery gift cards, connecting them as part of a community and helping them to change their own story and their own path.
So when did the organization start? When did people realize that there was a need for this?
Yeah, so the organization was started way back in the 90s by a group of volunteers who saw a need for food for kids.
in the 90s we didn't have as a city a whole lot of supports for those youth and um so this group of volunteers got together in a kitchen and literally started making food and putting it in brown bags and taking it to wherever kids were wherever teenagers were in those days um we did that that way or the community did that until uh early 2000s 2002 2003 when more organizations had popped up who specifically work with youth who are homeless.
um, the work of cups and woods, um, the Alex and Trellis, um, came into that space and were able to support those kids.
And about the same time, um, there was the need for food in schools was realized.
And so there had been some work done to look at what students could access in schools if they didn't have enough food.
Um, and it was that situation where, If you were lucky, your teacher had a bag of apples or a box of granola bars in their desk that they were buying themselves and that they were willing to share with you.
And so this group of volunteers took this thing they knew how to do to make lots of food and get it to kids, and they just switched their focus to doing that with schools.
What is, what is the mission? Like what is the overall purpose of, of what you guys do and what you provide?
So brown bagging is work is to connect kids in Calgary to the food that they need.
Our biggest one and the program that we've been running for 20 odd years that we're kind of most well known for is our school lunch program.
So we provide a lunch every school day to just about 8,000 kids all across the city of Calgary funded entirely by donations from community.
We also do A similar program in the summer, we're working with day camps and providing kids in day camps here in the city that maybe don't have access to food or aren't bringing food for lunch, providing them lunches.
And then we also do a program where we're working with families who are experiencing food insecurity to help them to shift what's happening for their family.
And so providing them with grocery gift cards, connecting them as part of a community and helping them to change their own story and their own path.
So when did the organization start? When did people realize that there was a need for this?
Yeah, so the organization was started way back in the 90s by a group of volunteers who saw a need for food for kids.
in the 90s we didn't have as a city a whole lot of supports for those youth and um so this group of volunteers got together in a kitchen and literally started making food and putting it in brown bags and taking it to wherever kids were wherever teenagers were in those days um we did that that way or the community did that until uh early 2000s 2002 2003 when more organizations had popped up who specifically work with youth who are homeless.
um, the work of cups and woods, um, the Alex and Trellis, um, came into that space and were able to support those kids.
And about the same time, um, there was the need for food in schools was realized.
And so there had been some work done to look at what students could access in schools if they didn't have enough food.
Um, and it was that situation where, If you were lucky, your teacher had a bag of apples or a box of granola bars in their desk that they were buying themselves and that they were willing to share with you.
And so this group of volunteers took this thing they knew how to do to make lots of food and get it to kids, and they just switched their focus to doing that with schools.
Every episode on Radar is fully transcribed, speaker-labeled, and rich with metadata. Here is a taste of this one. Try Radar for free to see the rest.
3 of 5
Child Hides At Lunch
What hunger looks like inside the classroom.
Pandemic Pivot To Gift-Cards
Then, schools closed and everything changed overnight.
No Questions, Just Food
Ensuring respect while handing out free lunches.
+2 more clips · 4 min 45 sec of audio in all
7 of 24
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
All 5 clips — the highlight moments, each cut as its own audio, with a title and a speaker
All 12 segments — the transcript broken into labeled sections, every ad read marked
All 24 topics — jump to every other episode discussing the same subject
Every related episode — other shows Radar links to this one
No account is needed to search Radar.
