For the second year in a row, a Manitoba man is camping outside Winnipeg's Thunderbird House, accepting donations for a free dinner for those in need.

Trevor Sanderson lives in Ste. Anne, Manitoba. He says he's from Winnipeg, and he's a military veteran who has experienced homelessness himself.

He's taking donations of food, clothes, toys -- anything that isn't cash -- for a dinner to be held at Thunderbird House December 15th.

"I feel that money doesn't have any sentimental value to it," says Sanderson. "These gifts that we're getting, that we're going to hand out, they come from the heart. They're not just, you know, 'oh I feel this is something I have to do.' This is the community giving back to itself."

Sanderson and his girlfriend, Kim Possible, are camping out until Sunday. They started this past Sunday.

The temperature tonight is forecast to hit a low of -28 degrees Celsius. Sanderson says last year was colder.

"It's chilly, but it's manageable."

Thunderbird House is allowing him to have fires every night, which he extinguishes before going to bed.

Last year Sanderson was out for a total of three weeks. He was homeless at the time, and had walked halfway across the country helping people he met along the way.

"I walked from Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Toronto, and when I got back to Winnipeg in November of last year, it just -- there was a lot of violence... so I decided to host a dinner here... I said it's about community, it's about bringing people together."

By about 2 this afternoon, Sanderson said he had 34 hams, 24 boxes of stuffing, 80 "beanie buddies," 100 pounds of potatoes from Peak of the Market, two turkeys, and Winnipeg Harvest is letting him come in a couple days before the dinner to get some items from them. Sanderson also says a woman today dropped off stuffed animals that belonged to her father. He says Santa will hand out the toys at the dinner, and anything that doesn't get used will be made into hampers for families.

"There's too much violence in the world. What we need to start showing is the caring because we do care a lot. It's just, you know, it's sad because people stereotype, you know, the lower-income families, the homelessness here in Winnipeg, but they don't realize how easy it is to end up here. I'm an industrial insulator by trade. I mean, when I was working in Alberta I was making $80-90,000 per year and I ended up homeless. So it's not like it can't happen to you."

This afternoon, Sanderson said he had toys for 90-120 kids. He's hoping to get up to 200-300.