H.O.P.E.’s Kitchen in North Bay has been living up to its name – Helping Our People Eat.
Since opening in the spring, founder Kate Valiquette has been helping out vulnerable members of the community.
“Nightly we go out and hand out care packages. Three nights a week we hand out hot meals to our homeless friends,” Valiquette said.
H.O.P.E’s Kitchen is looking to bring in a little extra money by holding a few community events, starting with a bake sale on Friday. Valiquette says that the community has come together to help out with the fundraising efforts.
“A lot of the meals are based off donations but we could always use a little bit extra so we had a lot of volunteers do our bake sale for us and we’re really excited about it,” she said, adding that she has had an arsenal of dedicated volunteers helping her.
Valiquette says that the bake sale will be the first of what she hopes is many community fundraising events, adding that she’s working on organizing a car wash and garage sale to help raise money.
“We get a lot of stuff that we can’t necessarily use for our outreach so we figured we’d turn it around and buy some things that we can [use],” she explained.
With the restaurant in its infancy during the pandemic, Valiquette says donations of any form to the organization are greatly appreciated.
“It’s been a little bit slower, but everything helps out. It’s important to get anything we can to come in. Every little bit helps. The more that we get, the more that we’re able to feed out or help out so it really helps us out in the long run, which helps our friends out,” she said.
Valiquette says that she is also in the process of getting H.O.P.E.’s Kitchen registered as a non-profit entity.
“In the meantime, anything that comes into this restaurant ends up going back out anyway,” she finished.
