The Story of Anuoluwapo Abiola Koleola
My name is Pastor Anuoluwapo Koleola. My venture name is Compassionate Mommies International. I relocated to Canada from Nigeria in 2018 but before my relocation, I was a restaurant owner in Nigeria as cooking is my family’s business.
As a food entrepreneur, I discovered there are serious hunger problems in my country, especially in my local community, Alimosho Local Government. Since I also was not born with a silver spoon, I decided to tackle the problem with the support of my friends and some family members. We established a food bank so as to take care of the underprivileged people in my local community.
As a pastor, I engage in feeding the less privileged members in my congregation because there is no amount of preaching you do, if there are hungry people in the congregation, I cannot have fulfillment as a pastor as Jesus also fed people on his earthly sojourn.
In Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic, there were food shortages and the problem of how the food will get to the consumers as there was a lockdown. Canada as a multicultural nation with people from all walks of life has over 250 ethnicities who are represented in Toronto alone. Many asylum seekers who flee war in their home countries reside in the Scarborough community and because they do not have skills (Canada is a highly skilled society) some of them still find it difficult to feed their households.”
In a bid to tackle the food problem both in our location in Scarborough, Toronto (the Scarborough area of Toronto has some low-income residents who need food assistance), Compassionate Mommies International became a registered venture in Canada and we rose to the challenges of addressing food shortages, food distributions, and food insecurities in Alimosho Lagos and Scarborough Canada.
We have more than 800 million people living with hunger every day, so we decided to alleviate hunger by making about 250 households in Scarborough, Toronto, and another 250 households in Alimosho Lagos State not go to bed hungry. Basically, we provide raw foods like rice, chickpeas, fruits and vegetables, milk, eggs, spaghetti, cooking oil and spices, chicken, fish, sausages, etc.
Our ambition is to establish food banks in our local communities so that food commodities can be accessible to people from various cultural backgrounds. We intend to establish at least 2 more food banks to the existing 2 that we have and to organize an annual gala/fundraising events that will help us get more funds to purchase more food.
We received a meritorious award for Excellent Community Service from the Afro Heritage Organization in Scarborough, Canada. We have been able to partner with Ablett Drive Impact Solutions, Ikeja, Lagos Nigeria, and Grace Place, located at Kennedy Road, Scarborough Canada. We rented open spaces both in Scarborough and Alimosho to distribute the food items to people. We purchased a van for food distribution in Lagos, Nigeria. We have 25 volunteers that help with food purchases and distributions in Lagos, and 15 active volunteers in Scarborough, Toronto, Canada.
Our short-term action plan is to extend our food distributions to other local communities that are in dire need of food. Many asylum seekers reside in Scarborough Toronto especially people who flee war such as Ukrainians, Afghanistan, Cambodians etc. They do not have permits to work yet so they need food to survive.
Our long-term action plan is to get Walmart, Foodco, and Costco Canada to partner with our venture. The hunger problem is not going to go away in a day, so systematically, we are networking with big names in the food industry to get more partnerships and support.
If you would like to learn more about Compassionate Mommies International, please visit our website and Facebook page.
