Speaker: Greg Jones is a chartered accountant (CPA-CA), with a B.Sc. (Agriculture) from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College and a Graduate Diploma in Christian Studies from the Acadia Divinity College.
During his career Greg has owned and operated a dairy farm, a golf course, and a public accounting practice. He currently is a partner in Wallace Living, with a portfolio of residential apartments, commercial buildings and assisted—living facilities in Truro and Bible Hill. Greg is also one of the founders of GroundswelI, a new church-plant scheduled to launch in September 2018 at the Truro Cineplex.
Greg found a way to combine his interest in agriculture, finance and Christian mission by volunteering as an overseas financial consultant with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB), a partnership of 15 Canadian Churches and church-based agencies working together for the past 35 years to end global hunger. Since 2015, he has travelled overseas to work on projects in DR Congo, Burundi, Cambodia, Laos, Lebanon, Malawi and Mozambique.
Following his most recent assignment, he joined a team of ten other Canadians who had travelled to Malawi for a two-week CFGB tour, where they learned about the impact of climate change on vulnerable and food-insecure people. For three days during that tour, he and his wife lived with a Malawian farm family who deal with the challenges of climate change, but whose lives had been dramatically transformed as a result of a CFGB project.
In 2016, Greg established a Canadian Food Grains Bank (CFGB) fundraising project on 8 acres of land in North River. Local farmers and business people donate inputs such as seed, fertilizer and chemicals, and services including tillage, planting, harvesting, trucking and storage to grow a crop of livestock-feed corn. All proceeds from the sale of the crop are donated to the CFGB to be used in the work of responding to world hunger. Not only does this approach help keep costs down, it fosters a sense of community spirit as local people work together to help hungry people in the developing world. In the 2018 season, the project has expanded to over 30 acres in production.
He and his wife Carol (also a CPA-CA) moved to North River over 25 years ago, where they raised their four daughters. Their family has grown to include two son-in-laws and two grandchildren.
Greg told the group more about the work of the Canadian Food Grain's Bank and elaborated on the educational trip he and his wife Carol had been privileged to go on to Malawi. The objective was to look at how climate change was effecting countries least able to adopt to the changes and the effect on food security.
Malawi is a small country about the size of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick where 80% of the population lives on the land and depend on what they grow to live. What they are seeing is that the predictability of the climate has gone and with it the old ways of farming. With no machinery and other resources they find it hard to adapt to the rapidly changing situation and malnutrition is becoming even more a major issue.
Greg related the results of one project that the CFGB had run that offered education assistance to local farmers and, over a period of 15 years, it had gone from 8 farmers to over 15,000 who had been able to deal with new crops, farming techniques and food preparation methods. The Farmer to Farmer process was working. Greg and Carol stayed for several days with a farm family and he stated the experience was transformative.
In conclusion, he listed the several ways that we could help. The most important is to learn about what is going on, make adjustments to our own lives and help those less fortunate when and where we could. It is very compatible with the work of Rotary.
Greg was thanked by Rotarian Dave Mills.
Ken MacLean won the prize for most interesting find with pair of jeans complete with matching underwear!
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