Frequent attendees of summer events around the Pembina Valley will likely have come across, at one time or another, The Bunker food truck.
Kevin Hildebrand, the executive director of The Bunker, said that it has been a busy summer for the mobile eatery.
“We have been running hard this summer, and it’s been fun because I have a great team,” he said. “It's fun doing [events] for people in this community. We've got some great businesses here to work with.”
For Hildebrand, the busy season means more than food sales — it’s also a chance to build relationships with youth in the Pembina Valley and create new opportunities for them.
A twofold purpose
Hildebrand said that since April, the food truck has served at 50 events, and between now and October, there are 39 to go.
The flourishing season benefits The Bunker (a faith-based youth drop-in centre) and its mission in a few ways.
“One [part] is that we make enough money that we can fund programming and keep the doors open ... so that we can do things for the kids in the evenings and stuff like that,” said Hildebrand.
“The other part is actually to employ young people in this community. That’s a great piece to it — being able to give them this opportunity to move forward somewhere in life that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise.”
Connecting over food preparation
For Hildebrand, spending days in the food truck preparing meals for the community has a way of creating an open environment where connection develops naturally.
“When you sit across the table from somebody who's got a rough anything going on in life, it's intimidating to open up and talk because it's just you sitting there staring into each other's eyes,” he said.
“[But] when you're working beside someone who is flipping burgers or cutting fries or ... serving sandwiches and their mind is half distracted by what they're doing, words come out and you get to have really cool conversations.”
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For Hildebrand, who believes “wholeheartedly” that young people today have more to grapple with than he did as a youth 30 years ago, building these bridges on the food truck is an important means of supporting youth in the community.
It’s something that everyone can be a part of by supporting The Bunker food truck or pouring into the community’s youngest members in similar ways.
Hildebrand said that one opportunity is with The Bunker itself — there are volunteer positions available at the centre.
“That would blow our minds because we have a much higher proportion of kids than we have volunteers,” he said.
To support The Bunker’s mission through donations, click here.
With files from Ty Hildebrand