Hot meal, with a side of dignity

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This article was published 12/12/2021 (1735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A hot meal is never far away for Brandon residents, thanks to Ted Dzogan and Ross Robinson.

They founded Everyone Eats Brandon, a not-for-profit started to address food insecurity and waste. It provides nutritious meals for Brandon residents three days a week on a pay-what-you-can basis.

“We wanted to provide (people) with a hot meal to help them stretch their grocery budget,” Robinson, 58, says. “That was the genesis of it.”

“(If) you want a safe community, you make sure everyone has a meal in their belly,” Dzogan, 44, says.

Food Matters Manitoba, another non-profit, defines food security as “when all people have what they need to eat well, all the time.”

Before the pandemic, more than 14 per cent of Manitobans and more than one in five children experienced food insecurity. COVID-19 has intensified it.

Everyone Eats’ two paid employees work alongside volunteers to make more than 200 meals on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Meals can be picked up or delivered for free.

The pay-what-you-can model fosters a sense of dignity and self-efficacy, Dzogan and Robinson say.

“This model… allows individuals to both receive and contribute to Everyone Eats, according to their individual means and capabilities,” they wrote in an article for Canadian Dimension this year. “Our meals are also not cans of soup. These are healthy, chef-inspired meals typical of a nice restaurant.”

The organization has served more than 31,000 meals since June 2020.

“Everyone Eats is a very simple way to show people that they’re loved and cared for,” Robinson says.

Dzogan and Robinson, who are both longtime volunteers, are no strangers to giving back to the community.

Dzogan grew up in Winnipeg in a single-parent family and started volunteering as a child at Health Sciences Centre, where his mother worked as a nurse.

He now lives in Douglas, a community east of Brandon. He owns and operates Summus Security, a company that installs and monitors security systems across Canada.

He serves as board president at the John Howard Society of Brandon and is involved with Manitoba ALIVE, a youth leadership program for high school students.

“I am a capitalist, and I do believe in free enterprise, but that is not the end goal of one’s life,” Dzogan says. “I want to be a good person.”

Robinson is the executive director of the John Howard Society of Brandon and likes to volunteer anywhere he can, from assisting with a 12-step program to helping the United Way.

“I’m very fortunate at this stage of life,” he says. “I’m healthy. I’d like to think I’m young at heart. My kids have moved on, and so my partner and I are available to do anything we get asked to do.”

The two men encourage people to get involved in their community, because society benefits when people work together.

“You support each other… by making sure that every time someone falls down, there’s someone there to pick them up and get them back on their feet,” Dzogan says.

If you know a special volunteer, please contact aaron.epp@gmail.com.