Jean Longfield knows that volunteering helps to build communities.
And there’s no community she loves better than Burlington.
Lucky for the city, she has – through the charity she began 18 years ago – spread that goodness to thousands of others in the hope that they do the same.
Longfield, who’s called Burlington home most of her life, is the founder and chair of the Gift of Giving Back – a non-profit organization that holds summer and late fall annual initiatives launched in partnership with youth athletic organizations to help kids feed kids in their community.
Over the years, Longfield, through the Gift of Giving Back, has taught young athletes and students the importance of giving back to their community.
The Gift of Giving Back inspires, supports, educates and empowers children through local minor athletics associations and school systems to compassionately give back to their community. It has grown to become the largest community food drive of its kind in Canada, and has raised more than 4.6 million pounds of food since its inception in 2005 – a direct community benefit of more than $1.8 million.
In Burlington, it benefits Salvation Army, Carpenter Hospice, Burlington Food Bank, Food For Life, Compassion Society, Food For Life and Halton Women’s Shelter.
This past year, food was raised by the Burlington Gymnastics Club, the Burlington Optimist Minor Baseball Association, the Oakville A’s, and Burlington Soccer.
Coming up, Nov. 14 and 15, the Burlington Eagles and Barracudas campaign takes place at M.M. Robinson High School, while the Oakville Rangers and Hornets campaign will be held at St. Thomas Aquinas High School, Dec. 5, 6 and 7. It expanded into Brampton in 2015 and is now the principal food drive for hockey organizations in that city. Each year, they partner with a different high school.
Each food drive literally fills three high school gyms with food, requiring transport trucks and forklifts to move it all to safe storage at the receiving food security agencies.
Longfield, 73, credits others for the Gift of Giving Back's success.
“It’s all thanks to the incredible generosity of Burlington citizens,” she said Longfield. “We inspire kids to act courageously and to be champions for the vulnerable, to spread their compassion as they grow into adulthood…to do good in the communities, to act with kindness and lift each other up and support the beneficiaries and learn about what they do. It’s been so much fun.”
A mom of two and grandma to four, Longfield is inspired by how much food has been raised by the community, and said it all got started when her son was in rep hockey.
“We looked around and my goodness, our kids are so fortunate to grow up in this fantastic community: schools, recreation programs, etc. and they were oblivious to those around them in need, especially kids,” she said. “They were being kids; they weren’t noticing it.”
She wanted to change that, so she did something that would draw their interest and show them that there are kids in the community who are struggling, maybe financially, or due to abuse or addictions.
“There are different reasons they aren’t thriving like other kids do," she said. "It’s all to do with socio-economic situation, and kids carry that disadvantage their whole lives. Some kids can never recover from that. I wanted to change that.”
That, Longfield stresses, is the reason the Gift was born. “Not to start a food drive. That’s not what we do and not what we wanted to do.”
Rather, it was founded on compassion, “to encourage compassion for our young people in crisis and we wanted them to know,” she said. “If they grow up and they know about it, they can continue to support them and help them do that work.”
That, of course, means inspiring other kids too, so they can lift them up – and not through their parents.
“This isn’t about going out and buying a toy to donate at Christmas time for instance,” she said.
“We wanted to introduce kids to volunteerism. Most don’t understand that communities can’t survive or thrive without volunteers. Sports or arts programs for example, we can’t afford to put kids in programs if it weren’t for the volunteers. If you had to pay for people to do those things, it would put programs out of reach for some people. I wanted to stress to them and their families how important it is to be invested in the community.”
At the annual food campaigns, individual students are designated as captains, just as is done in sports. They’re placed in charge, asked to attend meetings in advance and then their job is to take the information back to their teams, making the kids into better human beings.
“There’s so much messaging on social media right now, the positive messages are sometimes lost. If you make it a fun thing, a team thing, with an uplifting message and that kids are powerful changers. Being a part of the team, if you can get them on that wavelength, then they see it as a fun and good experience. They see everything as something they want to do.”
It works.
She has seen firsthand what happens when students see a bunch of people coming together to help. “They make a huge difference.
“I love working with the students, they inspire me everyday,” she said, adding that the Gift wouldn’t be what it is without the whole team. “All of us work very hard.”
“When I look back at what we have accomplished, it’s inspiring,” she said, adding the beneficiaries are dependent on what they bring in annually. “We have fed so many people for so long. I feel so privileged to do that for the city and the team. We have such a great idea and team and people believe in it and respond to it.
"We are very blessed to be able to respond.”
Longfield said she’s been volunteering most of her life. Her dad was the founder of the Burlington Soccer Club, and he talked about the importance of volunteering in the community.
All she hopes for going forward is that residents are friendly and welcoming to the young people asking for food/monetary donations.
