‘No one should go hungry’: Golf tournament hosted for Lake Country Food Bank
Published 4:00 pm Thursday, May 28, 2026
Okanagan golfers took a swing for a good cause as the Lake Country Food Bank hosted its second annual Tee Up To Drive Out Hunger tournament on May 28.
About 70 golfers participated in the Thursday tournament, which used its proceeds to support the food bank’s Helping Through Sharing Network program.
The network works with a number of partner organizations of the Lake Country Food Bank by helping supply food from the abundant Okanagan region to places with less access to food supply.
During the golf tournament, Joy Haxton, executive director of the Lake Country Food Bank, announced that the non-profit has been able to extend its helping hand to 76 organizations in 28 communities.
“(The network’s reach is) to Cranbrook. We’ve delivered down to Summerland, Cherryville, Lumby, Golden, Revelstoke and all in between,” Haxton said.
Haxton said events like the golf tournament help the good bank greatly. Aside from the direct fundraising aspect, she said the tournament helps to raise awareness for the food bank.
“You get to actually meet some of those organizations, whether it’s a food bank from Cherryville where they have no grocery stores, or you’re talking to Cranbrook where they can’t access any of the farmer or orchardist products that we get,” she said.
“When golfers go away and they tell the story, what happens is we get private foundations contact us and they’ll go, ‘hey, can I sponsor a program?”
Haxton gave an example, saying the food bank was able to procure a new trailer using funds by an anonymous donor who heard about the food bank’s efforts through last year’s golf tournament.
“This trailer will help us move food to areas where we need time to be able to disperse food that is refrigerated,” Haxton said.
The Lake Country Food Bank has also been partnered with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank to assist in the Helping Through Sharing Network program.
“We have a farmer tax credit with the provincial government, so the farmers get a tax credit, 25 per cent for the value of what they donate. And then we can actually preserve that product, and that produce, and then we can take our time, and through Joy (the Helping Through Sharing Network) and other networks like that we can get the food out to the people that need it,” said David Long, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.
Long said they have ambitions to expand the ability to facilitate food from the Okanagan further.
“We want to build a warehouse, maybe up in this area somewhere, up in Kelowna, up in Lake Country. We want to build a warehouse up here because there’s about 150 million pounds of surplus fruit every year,” Long said.
Learn more about the Helping Through Sharing Network and its member organizations by visiting lakecountryfoodbank.org.