The VanDyck Foundation
The VanDyck Foundation is a private operating foundation governed by a restricted charitable purpose trust (governing document), rather than a Board of Directors. Leah Dyck is the Trustee, and she’s also the Founder of the Fresh Food Weekly nutrition-based intervention program, which is run through The VanDyck Foundation.
​
Charitable Status No. 77364 5148 RR0001
Learn more about how Fresh Food Weekly started
Leah Dyck
Founder
Leah has been living in public housing since 2008, and has only ever had low-wage jobs despite the fact that she completed three college programs between 2009 and 2014; in Advertising, Social Media (Honour’s roll) and Fundraising (Honour’s roll). As a result, she's since gained a full comprehension of the social assistance programming currently available to people struggling to live, having made good use of them all for one-and-a-half decades.
Lived Experience has played a key role in the development of Fresh Food Weekly. The program itself was designed, founded by, and was run by one of its own recipients; Leah Dyck.
Our business principals
-
Ensure sound stewardship of donor funds by having protocols put in place to ensure beneficiaries are actually of vulnerable population groups. This is done through proof-of-income documentation.
-
Only purchase food at a discount - our buying power allows us to do this. Never pay retail prices.
-
Buy locally as much as possible.
-
Serve the most vulnerable population groups first.
-
Build a brand with a strong public-facing (a brand that engages in the community, i.e., the kid’s cooking workshops are an excellent example of achieving this).
-
Never stop evolving and adapting the program to have the highest impact possible on the lives of the people it serves.
Our grassroots connections
Barrie—Innisfil, Deputy Government House Leader | Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.
Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, Ontario, Vice-Chair Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.
Terry Dowdall, MP
Simcoe—Grey, Ontario, Member of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs. Member of the CAJP Canada-Japan Inter-Parliamentary Group.
Our family name
The VanDyck's
The VanDyck Foundation was named after Leah Dyck’s family’s previous family name, which was changed to ‘Dyck’ at some point in the last 500 years. The VanDyck’s had originally emigrated from The Netherlands, to Germany, to Russia and then to Canada. Leah’s grandfather was born on into a Russian Mennonite family estate of Pappelheim in the area of Andreyeka, just south of Slavgood, north of Rosenhof. Leah’s father, Clyde, says his grandfather was a medic for the Russian Red Cross during World War I because Mennonites didn’t believe in killing.
Leah’s family was part of the historic 1923 migration of 21,000 Mennonites from Russia to Canada, who were leaving the Soviet Union. On June 23, 1924 they boarded a train at Lichtenau near Muntau and eventually arrived by boat in Quebec City on July 17th. Upon processing at immigration stations, they were sent off in trains to find new land to farm.
Leah’s great grandfather, George, moved his family to Kitchener, where they were taken in by the David Hoffman family of Wallenstein, who provided them with shelter and work until they got themselves established. Eventually, he rented a farm at the end of Glasgow street on the outskirts of Kitchener for a brief period and then bought his own farm in East Preston. He named it Hopewell Farm because he hoped it would go well.
​
This is where Leah’s father and mother grew up, and met each other; in Preston, Ont., and the house on the farm her great grandfather bought still stands today at 658 Pine Street in Cambridge, Ont.
Here’s an aerial view of Hopewell Farm back when Leah’s father was still a child.
Ruth Dyck; 658 Pine Street., Preston, Ont.
“No one truly understands what it’s like to live in poverty without living in it themselves for at least a decade. It’s wrong. It’s inhumane. And someone needs to do something about it.”
- Leah Dyck
