Harvest Project is a community-based urban relief organization and registered Canadian charity. We connect with more than 1000 people each month – as we provide one-to-one client-coaching and active-listening, a rent bank, a grocery-support program, clothing supports, assistance for workforce re-entry, food-recovery and redistribution, and our retail Clothes For Change Thrift Boutique. All supported by volunteers and donors from every corner of the North Shore.
Harvest Project serves Metro-Vancouver’s North Shore, ‘extending a hand up’ to those in need. We provide assistance to residents from Deep Cove in the east to Horseshoe Bay in the west. Our vision is to enlarge our work as a compassionate presence for North Shore residents, by North Shore residents. We’re working to help the North Shore become the most inclusive, healthy and diverse community in Canada. We aim to collaborate with the other excellent services and not-for-profit agencies operating in our community.
In one of the wealthiest regions in Canada, critical family needs are often hidden and services are scarce for those who find themselves in desperate times. About 1 in 5 North Shore families are headed by a lone-parent – representing thousands of people. These families, and many others, are at-risk of losing access to physical, social and economic resources and opportunities.
Since 1993, Harvest Project has been reaching out to those who are experiencing extreme challenges with family break-downs, illness, job loss, and poverty. Our founder, David Foster, was a young West Vancouver business-person who fell on hard-times, found himself ‘on the street’, and was offered assistance by several local churches and other organizations. He came to embrace a Christian faith and felt inspired to begin Harvest Project as an expression of the Biblical principles of solidarity with those in poverty, caring for marginalized people, and seeking justice for neighbours in-need.