2024 – 2025

Mission

To feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and help the hurting.

How do we do it? By aiding all people and ministering to their whole self of spirit, soul, and body, all while demonstrating the radical love of Jesus Christ.

Vision

A community of people being made whole.

Our vision is to serve the community in innovative, effective ways that focus on the whole person, while being the leading voice and advocate for the unhoused. We include the word ‘being’ in our vision because we recognize that no one ever ‘arrives’. Everyone is on a journey towards being better than they were the day before, including us.

Values  

Compassion

We build authentic relationships through compassion, demonstrating the redemptive love that Jesus Christ first showed us.

Respect

Every interaction we step into is based on respect, no matter your choices, lifestyle, or circumstances, we place equal value on all people.

We’re a community leader that operates with integrity, striving to do the right thing in all situations.

Transformation

We serve to provide holistic and restorative services that lead to lasting, transformational change.

Grace-Led

We’re all about second chances. We recognize that everyone is on a journey and that success looks different for each.

Care That Covers Every Step

Shelter is more than a bed for the night. It is a place of safety, consistency, and care, where people can catch their breath, feel protected, and begin to rebuild. Each day at Kelowna’s Gospel Mission, men and women find stability in a supportive community designed to meet their immediate needs while creating a pathway toward long-term change.

KGM operates a range of shelter environments, including dedicated spaces for women that are shaped by dignity, understanding, and respect. Within our shelters, support extends far beyond a roof overhead. Residents are welcomed into a community where practical care and personal support work together to restore hope.

Through trauma-informed case management, residents receive individualized support tailored to their goals and circumstances. Whether someone is working toward stable housing, recovery, employment, improved wellness, or reconnection to community supports, our team provides guidance, advocacy, and consistent follow-up, helping each person take meaningful steps forward.

Community and belonging are also essential to healing. Life skills workshops, group programming, and shared activities help residents build confidence, strengthen healthy routines, and form meaningful relationships. Access to hygiene supports and basic necessities reinforces self-worth, while psychosocial programming supports emotional well-being. Where possible, pet-friendly spaces also help preserve the important bond between people and their animals, reducing barriers to shelter and helping residents feel more at home.

This work is made possible by the generosity of donors and the dedication of volunteers. Because of you, Kelowna’s Gospel Mission can provide safe shelter and compassionate support while walking alongside each person toward stability, renewed hope, and a new beginning. Thank you for standing with us.

“I was damaged at a young age. From that point, I turned off. I had to, to survive. I felt as though I was living a story, not as a person. My life up until this point has been that story, and I am just now realizing I might have another option.”  – Shelter Resident

Program Insights:

Caring For Those Unsheltered In Our Community

Outreach is often where hope first takes root. It is found in quiet, human moments: sharing a meal, listening with care, or offering a warm cup of coffee on a difficult day. Through these simple yet meaningful acts, Kelowna’s Gospel Mission meets individuals with compassion and affirms the inherent worth of every life.

Many of those we encounter are carrying significant burdens. Outreach allows us to meet people where they are, responding with patience, respect, and grace. By showing up consistently and honoring each person’s dignity, trust begins to form and space is created for meaningful transformation. These initial connections often become the first steps toward healing and renewed purpose.

As relationships deepen, Outreach serves as a pathway to further support. Our team walks alongside individuals as they explore next steps, including access to shelter, recovery programs, housing, mental health services, and employment opportunities. Throughout this journey, people are encouraged, supported, and reminded that they do not walk alone. Every step forward is rooted in compassion and sustained by hope.

This ministry is made possible through the faithfulness and generosity of our supporters. Your giving is a tangible expression of love and a testament to a community committed to serving others. Together, we are creating space for restoration, belonging, and lasting change, trusting that God is at work in every story.

“My whole life I have felt like I was just surviving. From when I was a young kid, I was the only one looking out for myself, I did what I had to do to survive, and it worked. Now, I am starting to understand that authentically living is different, and I might get the chance to do it”. – Shelter Resident

Program Insights:

Nourishment & Innovation at Work

Food has the power to do far more than fill a plate. When it’s prepared with care, food restores strength, offers comfort, and quietly says, you matter. At Kelowna Gospel Mission, food is an act of love and hospitality. It is shared with intention, respect, and the belief that every person who comes through our doors is worthy of being fed well.

Providing nutritious, varied, and thoughtfully prepared meals is central to preserving dignity and supporting healing. Good food supports physical health, steadies the mind, and reminds people of their own worth. When someone is offered a meal that is nourishing and enjoyable, not an afterthought, it affirms that they are deserving of care, not just survival.

Our kitchen has become a place of creativity, stewardship, and purpose. We work hard to honour every ingredient that has been grown, raised, or harvested for human consumption. Through careful planning, preservation, and innovation like dehydrating, repurposing, and using every part of what we receive—we ensure nothing is wasted. Food is not disposable, and neither are people.

This approach allows us to stretch resources, plan ahead, and continue showing up tomorrow. Each preserved ingredient represents another meal, another moment of dignity, another opportunity to care for someone well. Stewardship isn’t about cutting corners it’s about maximizing purpose.

The kitchen is also a place of growth. It offers meaningful work, skill development, and pathways toward stability and employment. Here, food becomes a bridge to confidence, to belonging, and to a future that feels possible again.

Through your generosity, food at KGM becomes more than nourishment. It becomes faith in action, hope made tangible, and love served daily one thoughtful meal at a time.

Program Insights:

What does it mean to you and the Kitchen team to serve food at KGM? 

Serving food at KGM is sacred work. It’s not transactional, it’s relational. The kitchen is often the first place where the line between helper and helped starts to blur. We don’t just serve meals; we share a sense of belonging. For our team, food is a language of belonging. Many of the people who walk through our doors have been told explicitly or implicitly, that they are a burden, an afterthought, or invisible, they have been labeled at their worst. Every meal is our quiet refusal to accept that narrative. It’s a way of saying, you are seen, you are valued, and you are worth our best.

Why is providing nutritious and thoughtfully prepared food important to dignity and healing?

Dignity is communicated long before a word is spoken. It’s in the temperature of the plate, the balance of the meal, the seasoning, the care. Thoughtfully prepared food restores something that poverty, trauma, and instability often strip away: choice, agency, and worth. Healing doesn’t happen in survival mode. Nourishment, real nourishment, creates the conditions where bodies can rest, minds can settle, and hearts can begin to trust again. When food is prepared with intention, it tells people they are not a problem to be managed, but a person worthy of care.

Can you share an example of how you use every part of an ingredient?

One example we share in the Feeding Hope cookbook is carrots. The carrots themselves might be roasted or added to soups and stews as a nourishing, familiar comfort food. The peels are saved and used in vegetable stock, building flavour for future meals instead of being thrown away. Even the carrot tops often overlooked are turned into a vibrant pesto or chopped into sauces and grain dishes. Using the whole ingredient reflects how we approach this work. Nothing is disposable. What might be seen as scraps still have value, purpose, and flavour. That mindset carries through everything we do in the kitchen and mirrors how we see people, too. Everyone has worth, even the parts that have been bruised, overlooked, or set aside

What excites you about the future of the kitchen work and food served at KGM?

What excites me most is the continued shift from feeding people to feeding hope. The future of the kitchen is more inclusive, more creative, and more rooted in dignity whether that’s through local partnerships, zero-waste practices, skill development, or food that meets people where they are. We’re building something that isn’t just about scale, but about depth. A kitchen that reflects the belief that good food belongs to everyone, and that hospitality can be a pathway to healing, connection, and community.

If supporters could see one thing behind the scenes, what would you want them to know about how their giving is stewarded?

I’d want them to see the care. The planning, the stretching, the creativity. Every ingredient is honoured. Every dollar is stewarded. Nothing is casual, and nothing is taken for granted. Their generosity doesn’t just fund meals—it fuels intention. It allows us to choose dignity over efficiency, quality over shortcuts, and relationship over transaction. Behind every plate is a deep respect for the trust that supporters place in us, and a commitment to use that trust wisely. We hold true to the belief that if food was grown, raised, or harvested with the intention of feeding people, then it should be consumed by people. When food meant for human nourishment is diverted to compost, animal feed, or other secondary uses, that represents a loss of its original purpose.

Food grown for human consumption deserves to fulfill that purpose first. Anything less is waste.

And, check out his cookbook!

Check out Chef Jeremy’s new cookbook, Feeding Hope! All of the proceeds go to KGM’s programs and services.

To buy the book or learn more, click here.

More Than Clean Teeth. Restoring Health, Dignity, And Confidence.

Access to dental care can be a turning point. Pain, infection, and untreated oral health issues often affect far more than physical wellbeing. They can limit confidence, disrupt daily life, and become a barrier to stability. Our Dental Clinic provides care that supports both health and dignity, reflecting a commitment to serve others with compassion.

The Clinic provides professional care to seniors, children and individuals who may not be able to access treatment through conventional dental offices. Patients are welcomed regardless of their financial situation, with services offered on a sliding scale to ensure access for those facing significant barriers. Care is delivered with patience, kindness and honours each person as they are.

In the past fiscal year, the Clinic wrote-off over $500,000 in dental services so patients could receive support regardless of income. Each visit represents an opportunity to relieve pain, restore function, and affirm the worth of every individual who walks through our doors.

For many patients, improved oral health supports broader life goals. Freedom from pain can make it possible to pursue employment, housing, education, and renewed connection with others. In these moments, dental care becomes part of a larger journey of healing and restoration.

This ministry is made possible through the generosity of people like you. Together, we serve with compassion and faith, trusting that God can use even small acts of care to bring hope and lasting change.

“I want to thank you for all your help in getting me booked into an emergency appointment to check on my sore tooth and for further helping in taking  my wife and I on as patients, You have no idea how much this means to us. Being on disability,we haven’t been able to keep up with the costs at regular dentists, so being your patient really is a great comfort. My tooth is repaired thanks, in part to you!” – Dental Clinic Client

A Message From Levi, Director of Outreach, Casework and Care

In a season when public conversations about homelessness, social disorder, and substance use are often marked by urgency and frustration, I want to begin by naming a truth dear to the heart of KGM: while none of us stands outside these realities, human dignity does not disappear when stability is lost. We hold to the conviction that everyone bears the image of God, and so we would do well to remember that a healthy community is measured by its capacity to support those who are most vulnerable. Despite the turbulence around us, your support and commitment to our shared work this past year has helped push back against our collective tendency to lose sight of that.

Indeed, there are things we truly ought to be paying attention to! This past fiscal year, with your support,  we have served 205,860 nutritious meals, connected with 723 people in spiritual care, and saw 114 people connected to transitional housing,

What we witness daily in our shelter is that opportunities for transformation occur when these sorts of things can take place. It takes time, and it rarely comes through force or distance, but through relationship and connection. God’s own response to our brokenness was not withdrawal, but presence. In the slow, relational work of sheltering, outreach, and coming alongside people in crisis, our residents rebuild their lives and let hope take root.

So, this year, we celebrate your participation in this work, we marvel at the tenacity of those we serve, and we give thanks to God for how he has given us to each other, that we might be a community of people being made whole!

“I guess we always think God will say something angry- but he didn’t. I look at how many times he has said he loves me, and that my purpose is to accept that and love others with him. I know that now.” – Shelter Resident

“I have hurt a lot of people. I almost hurt a lot more, I was just so angry, thinking monstrous things. God pulled me out of all of it. I have no more hate left, I don’t have it in me to get angry. I have experienced love for the first time.” – Shelter Resident

Program Insights:

Showing Up For Each Other in a Real Way

Kelowna Gospel Mission exists because of community and because of God’s call to love our neighbours. This work is made possible by people who choose to show up, give generously, and reflect Christ’s compassion in practical, everyday ways.

Our donors and volunteers are at the heart of KGM. From faithful monthly supporters to one-time givers, from individuals and families to churches, businesses, and community groups, each contribution of time, resources, and compassion helps create safety, dignity, and hope. Whether through financial gifts, food and supplies, or hands-on service, your generosity strengthens every part of our work.

We are also grateful for those who participated in and supported community-led events throughout the year, including The Ultimate Takeout Challenge, Strides, Art for Impact, and the Golf Tournament. Alongside moments like baseball games, made possible with support from Peter’s Independent, and shared meals, these gatherings remind us that community is built not only through service, but through joy, presence, and coming together in meaningful ways.

Whether you are a long-time donor, a first-time volunteer, someone who donated pizza for a baseball game, or a neighbour who simply showed up, you are part of this mission. It takes all of us. Thank you for being part of this community!

Program Insights:

In partnership with the City of Kelowna, we led 8 homelessness awareness workshops for Kelowna businesses supporting 11 businesses and 79+ individuals to build empathy, understanding, and connection.

YOU Made a Real Difference!

Our work is sustained by the generosity of those who choose to give with purpose. We take seriously the responsibility of managing these resources with integrity and ensuring support reaches people in meaningful and timely ways. The following financial summary reflects how your contributions helped advance care, stability, and hope over the past fiscal year.

Where Generosity Comes Full Circle

Did you know there are several ways to be part of the KGM Community Thrift Store? Whether you donate, volunteer, or shop, each interaction plays a meaningful role in supporting neighbours in need and strengthening our community.

This store is more than a place to shop. It is a space where generosity, care, and community come together with purpose. Every item on the shelf represents an opportunity to support people who are facing hard seasons.

When you donate gently used clothing, household goods, furniture, and more, you help give those items a second life while directly supporting our work. Donations reduce waste, extend dignity, and help sustain essential programs that provide meals, shelter, and compassionate care.

Volunteers are at the heart of the thrift store. By giving their time and skills, they help create a welcoming environment where kindness and connection are felt by everyone who walks through the doors.

When you shop, every purchase makes a difference. All proceeds from the thrift store are reinvested into our programs and services, helping to bring hope and practical support to people in our community who need it most. This is a place where something once loved finds a new home, and where generosity, in all its forms, helps change lives.

Come visit us at 125 Roxby Road!

Thanks to generous donations, the KGM Thrift Store helps support our programs, and this year we were also able to provide $49,000 worth of items to neighbours in need across our community.