The Mustard Seed Street Church has been essential in fighting hunger and restoring faith to people living in greater Victoria since 1975. Nearly 100% community funded, their operations include the most accessible food bank in Greater Victoria, the Food Security Distribution Center, family back-to-school and Christmas supports, hospitality programs, services at Hope Farm Healing Centre, and church services. We sat down with Treska Watson, executive director at The Mustard Seed to learn more! 

01. TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF.

Treska: My name is Treska Watson. I am the executive director of The Mustard Seed. I’ve been here just over 5 years, starting as a donor relations coordinator in their little social enterprise coffee company. I started in fundraising, transitioned to events management, and then to director of food security. During the last two years I moved to the director of operations, and just recently moved into the role of executive director. So, I’ve done quite a few of the jobs at this organization. I love this organization – everything about it and the team that we’ve built. The work we do and the people that I get to do it with, is really near and dear to my heart. I couldn’t be happier.

02. WHAT DOES A TYPICAL DAY LOOK LIKE IN YOUR WORLD?

Treska: Working in a non-profit organization can be pretty wild. Everyone jumps in and does everything all the time. A typical day for me could be anything from meeting stakeholders and funders or having high level conversations about the vision for the organization, right down to pitching in at the food bank or helping our hospitality team get ready to serve. My role is always trying to look at our vision and mission and where we’re headed, but that doesn’t mean I’m too busy to help the team with whatever they need.

03. WHAT IS THE MUSTARD SEED AND WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT?

Treska: We’re a really unique organization. The Mustard See is on Vancouver Island, and has a long legacy here in this city, which makes a huge difference. Early on it was all about helping people and then it became a food bank in the early 80s. It’s grown into a much larger organization, especially in the last 5 to 10 years. We have dedicated volunteers, donors, stakeholders, funder, all people who really believe in the work that we do.

We now have three locations, the first is the downtown location, which is our food bank and hospitality center. We help the unhoused and anybody who needs help with food. Our second location is a 22,000 square foot warehouse in Esquimalt, where we operate our food rescue program. We have three trucks on the road five days a week rescuing food from 33 grocery stores. This program as grown exponentially in the last five years, not only serving our food bank and the work we do but serving over 70 non-profit agencies all over the city. Lastly, we have our Hope Farm Recovery Center, which is a farm where folks can go to live and work on the land while they work through their recovery. We’re just getting back into having residents there again, but we’ve got incredible people out farming the land, working on the irrigation, and planting. We have 200 chickens and a great deal of produce, which we sell and donate to non-profits, school meal programs, or the food banks that operate in that area.

04. WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE YOU STARTED?

Treska: I started in 2019, right before the pandemic, so I would say it’s a very different organization pre-pandemic versus post-pandemic. The pandemic allowed us to take a step back, see what was and wasn’t working, and where we could improve. We made some great improvements to our service during this time. So, the organization, in my opinion, is stronger and more cohesive.

Since I started right before, I had the opportunity to go over to the warehouse and build out that program. Our food rescue program has probably tripled in size over the last five years. Originally, we were only rescuing 4,000 pounds of food a day, and no we see anywhere from 10,000 to 12,000 pounds a day being rescued.

Our warehouse had a huge change during Covid, in that agencies could come in onto the floor with staff and volunteers sorting through the food. People were everywhere and it was a little bit chaotic. We had to pivot, as we couldn’t have that many people in such proximity, so we decided to serve our agencies, allocating two of our bay doors to them. Our smaller staff team would go and get everything from the cooler or shelves and bring it to the bay doors to give to the agencies. We always want to make sure everyone feels they get some of everything we have. This allowed us to be much more organized, where we could streamline and customize our service. It was a really wonderful, unexpected, great change.

05. WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE RIGHT NOW?

Treska: If I had to zero in on our biggest challenge as an organization, I would say we serve a lot of population of unhoused and folks living with addiction. With that, our biggest challenge is how to serve those people with incredibly complex mental health struggles or different layers of issues. Finding a way to serve people in a way that gives them dignity, access to a warm place to have a coffee or a bag of food to take with them, whether they are living in a tent or living in a house.

We always want to make sure that our services are accessible to as many people as possible, and second to that, being a non-profit, how do we make sure the machine keeps going. We’re always looking for ways to increase funding and make sure we have sustainable funding streams so that we can continue to do the work we do.

06. WHAT SERVICES DO YOU OFFER THAT YOU WANT OTHERS TO KNOW ABOUT?

Treska: Our food bank serves thousands of individuals every month, it’s very busy and we continue to serve as many people as possible with a dignity of choice model. Meaning people are able to come and choose what’s appropriate for their families or their culture.

Our hospitality department functions as a provider of coffee and snacks. Early in the morning, we open a coffee window to cater to our visitors. Additionally, we offer access to a chapel space for individuals to stay and relax. The space is equipped with tables, chairs, and often features music, bingo or movies for entertainment. Each day we serve a hot lunch to approximately 150 to 200 people, and this meal is prepared by our chef at our food rescue center, utilizing rescued food whenever possible.

We have our food security distribution center where our trucks are out on the road rescuing food. We have a team of about 15 volunteers with our staff over there sorting through the food and repackaging it. So, not only is the chef preparing meals from this food stream, but we’re seeing over 70 agencies come to pick up food. Since most of this food is perishable, we have to get it in and out the door quickly, and we typically get it back out the door within 24 hours. So, it’s a really high turnover, busy operation.

Lastly, we have our farm as I mentioned earlier. We typically sell eggs or produce right off the farm, and depending on the time of year we’ll sell plants that we didn’t need for planting. With that we have our Healing Center component for folks to work through recovery, post rehabilitation.

07. HOW DO YOU SEE CANADA’S CURRENT ECONOMY AFFECTING THE MUSTARD SEED AND THE INDUSTRY?

Treska: That is a really big question. Cost of living and what’s going on with the economy has a direct impact on the work we do. Food Banks Canada, which is one of our governing bodies, calls the hunger count every year. They will do a snapshot of what’s happening across the country in food banks. Things have been changing so rapidly this last year, for instance, when the information came out in October, there was some significant statistics. We saw an exponential increase nationally in double income families accessing food banks, which is just not a demographic that we’ve previously seen a lot of.

The flipside is, we don’t want a stigma. We want to make sure everyone feels they can access our services. So the cost of food, of all of it, is contributing to a much larger systemic problem.

08. WHERE DO YOU SEE THE MUSTARD SEED IN 5 YEARS?

Treska: I see us delivering the same service that we are delivering now, hopefully with greatly improved infrastructure around us that is helping serve the community and people in need outside of our organization. Whether that’s housing support or different things that other levels of government are going to have to get involved in.

One piece of work we’re doing over at the warehouse is building out a skills training center. We recognize that food banking is not the answer, so we’re hoping to have a training center where we can have people come in and do practicums to learn warehouse skills. Whether it’s forklift training, learning from the chef, or food safety, we want to create a center where people can come in and leave to enter the workforce. To us, this is creating a more sustainable, local system, by training people up and bringing awareness to the work we do is an important piece.

09. WHAT IS THE BEST CAREER ADVICE YOU NEVER GOT? WHAT’S SOMETHING YOU WISH YOU KNEW EARLIER IN YOUR CAREER?

Treska: That things take time. I tend to be somewhat impatient, and I want things to happen quickly. I get excited and passionate about things, but sometimes good things take time. It’s probably the advice I never got but learned the hard way. Something I wish I knew earlier in my career is that it’s okay to make mistakes and learn as you go. It’s okay to not know all of the answers.

10. WHAT’S A RESOURCE YOU USE THAT YOU THINK MORE PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?

Treska: A resource people don’t realize is that there are probably a lot of people around them that can help them. I think talking and sharing about what you’re going through at work or personally is a huge resource. I wish more people felt like they had a place where they could tell their story and be who they need to be in front of people.

11. IF YOU HAD A MAGIC WAND TO CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR JOB, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Treska: Ultimately, I think it would be that my job wouldn’t exist, that there wouldn’t be so many people in need. If I had to think about something for our organization, the other magic wand would be that this organization has stable funding indefinitely, so that we could continue to do the work that we do.

12. WHAT’S THE FIRST THING THAT ALLOWED YOU TO SUCCEED IN YOUR CAREER?

Treska: Well, I’m not sure it was the first thing, but I think an important part of my story is that I worked in corporate for a long time. I worked for Canada Post as a letter carrier and a clerk for years. I then became an area supervisor, and I would travel around to different offices when people were on vacation. I worked there for 12 years, and I knew the entire time that I was doing work that I didn’t want to be doing.

I think that’s what really allowed me to succeed in non-profit. When I made the switch, I had a deep need and desire to have work that aligned with who I was and my values. I think overall I know what it was like to work for an organization that was profit driven, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There were a lot of really great opportunities and ways to build a career. It just didn’t fill me up or make me feel like I was doing work with meaning.

Learn more about The Mustard Seed and all of the things they do to help their community – mustardseed.ca.

This interview has been edited and condensed.