Ken Lyotier was a champion of the people in the Downtown Eastside, where he lived and worked since the 1970s. He was a tireless innovator and advocate for those living in poverty and for “binners,” people who earn money by collecting and returning recyclables.

Since 2007 alone, the Van Tel/Safeway Legacy Fund has granted more than $1.5 million back to the community. But that is just dollars. The magnitude of the real gift is much larger, as it lives on in the lives of every person touched by the hundreds of organizations that received funding, and in all the future grants to come, built on the 60-year history of these credit unions and the goodwill of thousands of their members.

Sometimes what makes the biggest difference in a person’s life is the sense of confidence that comes from getting back to work and belonging in the community. Last year, Nicole Thurgood was looking too long and hard for work. She began feeling low, asking herself: “What am I going to do? How do I feed my family?” The 46-year-old Strathcona resident turned to a job-readiness program with Mission Possible, a Vancouver community development agency and accepted a six-month transitional job in one of its social enterprises, MP Maintenance, which provides exterior building cleaning services and landscape maintenance.