An annual festive event hosted by the Bissell Centre is in jeopardy this time around, as the organization has not yet secured a partner to help cater it.
Officials said the Bissell Centre had hosted a dinner on New Year’s Day every year for the last 25 years – serving 1,000 meals on January 1, 2016 for people in Edmonton’s inner-city.
This year, the organization doesn’t have a partner, and can’t host the event without help.
“With the downturn, the economy, the companies just aren’t in the position to be able to help out again, especially on this size of a meal,” Darren Brennan with the Bissell Centre said. “We’re right now on the 11th hour of finding somebody to help cater this meal, because our commercial kitchen just doesn’t have the capacity to create a thousand meals for 600 people.”
The New Year’s Day Dinner is the Bissell Centre’s biggest annual event, and needs 120 volunteers to help run it – the event features a traditional turkey dinner, along with holiday stockings and live music.
