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Craig Hamaliuk told his friends at a dinner last week that the orphanage they had supported in the village of Zumbahua, Ecuador, was out of food money.

“We need to raise $400 a month to make sure these youngsters living in extreme poverty have a hot meal every day for the next year,” said Hamaliuk, an Edmonton personal fitness trainer.

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His heart went out, he said, to the volunteers who work in this small village four hours from Quito and nestled 14,000 feet up in the Andean foothills.

What took place next happens once a year at a dinner held at the Santa Maria Goretti Centre near Commonwealth Stadium.

In minutes, enough cash was raised to feed the youngsters hot meals for not one but two years.

The dinner, organized by the Canadian Volunteers for International Development Society (CVIDS), attracts many health care professionals and lay people who have for years supported work in Ecuador, and more recently Bolivia and India.