Profile: Marie-Edith St.Vil
Marie-Edith St. Vil is well known in Ottawa’s Black community. The Haitian-born Communications Officer with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, somehow finds time from her very busy schedule to combine her deep love for children and her desire to give back to the community. With the support of her husband Guynemer and her church, the Ottawa 7th Day Adventist Church, she initiated the Feed the Children: People Helping People, organizing a daily schedule for drivers and volunteers to deliver food that was donated to families in need. The families the program helps are often single-parent families where either the parent works two jobs and does not have time to prepare well balanced breakfasts or cannot afford to feed the children properly. Says Marie-Edith: “I am so thankful that since 1995 the People-Helping-People Food Distribution Project established by my husband and I, continues to flourish and we have been able to distribute to thousands of families, women and family shelters, immigrant welcome centers and other more vulnerable members of our community. What is most critical is for me to hear the words on day: ‘Welcome my good and faithful servant, you have served well with the skills I have blessed you with; hence, come and eternally enjoy with me what I prepared for you since the foundation of the world.’ For me, a life or service is the ultimate”.