The Salvation Army in Surrey is helping new immigrants to Canada learn "how to survive and thrive" with nutritious food.
Diane Cross from Surrey Ministries Salvation Army said it has various programs that help introduce people to Canadian ingredients and foods they might not be familiar with.
"We have a lot of immigrants coming in, they don't really know Canadian food, and so when we're doing food distribution and we're handing out a turnip, they have no idea what to do with the turnip, so they refuse it," Cross said.
In January, the non-profit will start a cooking program for kids aged seven to 11. Every month, the students learn how to make a new meal, focusing on a specific part of the meal each week.
For instance, in the first week, students would learn how to boil pasta; the next week, they would learn how to make the sauce; and in the third week, they would make a side.
"Then on the fourth week, we're sending home a whole meal that the child now has learned over the last four weeks how to prepare, and then they get, what I call, a HelloFresh box that has all of those elements. Then the child now knows how to cook a meal for the family."
The Surrey ministry also has a drop-in in their office's parking lot (13474 96th Ave.) on Wednesdays and Fridays. The program is focused on introducing new types of food to high school students from Queen Elizabeth Secondary School, which is right around the corner from their office.
"As students are walking past at the end of the night, we put our canteen truck out and we're serving food, and that's been an experience, but we're serving food again, just to introduce people to different types of food," Cross said.
The students loved it when they served garlic bread, but not so much when we gave them boiled eggs.
"Now the students, they look for us," Cross said. "We were late, like two, three minutes late one day, and I saw this family and his mom and her two boys walking past, and you can see the boys like reaching their head looking towards the door, because they knew we should be out there, and they're walking slow and when our door open they just bee-lined, not even to the truck, right into the entrance of the building."
Although the program is directed at the students and their families walking by, it is open to anyone.
Visit surreysa.ca to learn more about the Salvation Army's programs in Surrey.
