REGINA - As the holiday season is here, many families across the city rely on the Regina Food Bank to provide meals.
Over the past years, the Regina Food Bank has partnered with Loblaws for its annual Holiday Food Drive, where people can donate money to the food bank.
John Bailey, CEO of Regina Food Bank, talked about the number of donations the food bank has received since the collaboration started.
"Over the years, the Loblaws campaign has donated hundreds of thousands of meals to our community through their holiday campaign. This year, we expect very much the same."
Bailey highlighted the importance of collaboration since so many families rely on the food bank due to economic pressure.
According to Bailey, next year, families can expect to pay "$2,000 to $3,000" more from rising costs of essential items, like housing, fuel, goods and more.
Bailey noted that people are likely not going to get an increase in their wages that will match the rising cost of living.
Because of the rise in the cost of living, many more people are relying on the food bank. Right now, Bailey said, it’s estimated that "24,000 to 25,000 people face food insecurity in our city in any given year."
Last year, Bailey said the food bank recorded 204,000 points of service, with that number expected to increase by above 225,000. Of those points of service, the food bank saw nearly 20,000 unique individuals, which means, on average, every person came to the food bank around 10 times.
The amount of people that have used the food bank has caused some people to apologize directly to Bailey for having to rely on their community-based organization.
However, Bailey believes it "takes a tremendous amount of courage to walk through those doors the first time to access the food bank. He added, "we want to be people's first step in stabilizing and moving forward, and I think there's a real value in that. So, for me it's about [what were] doing [to] invoke stigma in folks, and we want to stop that. That's [why] we're doing things like the community food hub that sort of de-institutionalizes the process."
The BMO Asahtowikamik Food Hub, which opened in August, has received a lot of positive feedback, said Bailey.
People going to the hub enjoy the variety of food they can choose from, and it [the hub] gives the food bank an understanding of what folks like and need.
In terms of the hub growth, Bailey said, "[we] started at [serving] 120 [people] [then we] moved to [serving] 150 [people], now we're at 210 [in terms of serving people]. By the end of March, we're hoping to be [able to serve] around 300 or 400 [people at the hub.]
Canada Post strike causing issues for food bank
The Canada Post strike has gone on for nearly a month now, affecting many organizations, including the Regina Food Bank.
Bailey mentioned "the absence of direct-to-household mail through Canada Post has been really impactful for us from a budget perspective."
While Bailey does not know the specific amount of donations currently not delivered due to the strike, He pointed out, "if we're short $100,000 to $150,000 [in terms of donations for meals], that's 450,000 meals [that would be funded from donations.]"
The food bank had a goal of getting five to six million meals out to the community this year. The strike could mean the food bank misses their mark by around 9 per cent, which is a big deal for the community-based organization.
Bailey mentioned the food bank might have to tap into their reserves. A common practice for a food bank is to have reserves or extra funds in case they're needed.
Even though the food bank can use the reserves, Bailey said, "tapping into reserves is something that we try to avoid." He added, "we'd much rather have those reserves put towards serving our community better and continuing to make sure we're innovative in our delivery and innovative in the way we're meeting the needs of our community. That's what we ideally like to use those reserves for."
Another factor of the strike for the food bank was cancelling their Dec. mail out because they didn’t wanna waste money on mail that may not get out to the recipients.
On Friday, the federal government asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order the end of the strike.
Bailey admitted he couldn’t comment on the current negotiations. Although, he noted every day the postal workers have been on strike, the time lost equals a day and a half worth of recovery and sorting through the mail.
When the strike does end, Bailey said the food bank can better understand what the impact of the strike has been on their budget, and people [that are affected by the strike] can go back to work, which he feels is "overall a positive thing."
Anyone interested in donating to the food bank is recommended to send funds. For every dollar donated, the food bank turns the money into three meals. With the ongoing strike, people are encouraged to donate money online at reginafoodbank.ca.
People with food are asked to donate "can[ned] proteins, can[ned] vegetables, pasta, pasta sauce, that kind of stuff," said Bailey.
The food bank is not currently looking for turkey or ham donations. Bailey mentioned the food bank has loads of those sorted out for their holiday hampers.
