It’s almost the giving season again, and as we daydream about turkey dinners to come, local food drives are ramping up their efforts to provide quality meals for everyone.
Kelly Christie, director of community supports at Woolwich Community Services, said they’re preparing for Thanksgiving with drop off bins at the Elmira grocery stores and help from local community groups.
“We do see an increase in donations,” Christie said in regards to Thanksgiving. “It’s very important that we do because usually our shelves are pretty light after we’ve gone through a quiet summer. Our food hamper requests don’t decrease so we’re still giving out the regular amounts.”
She said they don’t do specific Thanksgiving food hampers because they do special Christmas food hampers. But, their monthly hampers are well-rounded and generous as they are. People who receive the hampers receive additional food and a grocery gift card to help with the extra stress of Christmas.
The Woolwich food bank is in great need of a number of items, she added.
“Our needs would be family size juice, canned fruits, cold cereal, the individual oatmeal packs, tuna and/or salmon, canned meat, jam, sugar, flour, and then personal hygiene stuff, so shampoo, and conditioner, and toiler paper, and toothpaste, and laundry soap,” Christie said.
Those are the items the food bank always seems to run out of. Christie said a group of ladies from Floradale Mennonite Church are coming in on October 15 to sort and put away all the food that’s been donated by the community.
Aside from the packaged food coming in from the grocery stores, the food bank also receives chickens from a local farmer every nine weeks. While farmers aren’t donating produce to the Woolwich food bank, Christie said it’s quite likely they’re giving some of their surplus to the Food Bank of Waterloo Region because they have a warehouse to store more products.
She’s hopeful the community will continue to give, as they always do, to support local families who are struggling.
“Our shelves are in desperate need,” Christie said.
High school students are up to that challenge. The EDSS leadership class and Youth in Action club have partnered up this year to collect as much food as they can to help restock the larder.
They used to do Halloween for Hunger and the Thanksgiving food drive separately, but now they’re running it all as Halloween for Hunger. The homeroom that accumulates the most points through food donations will receive a pizza party.
Nicole Wideman, Danielle Wideman, and Tyler Townsend are spearheading the initiative.
“The whole month of October we’re donating food,” Nicole said. “From now until the day before Halloween we’re doing a homeroom challenge that everybody gets to donate as many food items as they can. You get points for how many you bring in and we also put on there the ones that the food drive needs especially so those are bonus points.”
She said at the end they might build something interesting with the food cans, but it depends how much they gather. Last year they filled two pickup trucks full of food.
In the spirit of giving, the provincial government recently launched the food donation tax credit for Farmers. As part of the 2013 Local Food Act, this will give farmers a tax credit for 25 per cent of the fair market value of the products they donate to food banks and student nutrition programs.
Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs Jeff Leal said the farmers who run Ontario’s 50,000 farms have been generous for decades. This tax credit will act as another incentive to continue that generosity.
“In Ontario our agricultural community has a long and very distinguished history in donating to all kinds of causes,” Leal said. “We just felt at this time as part of the Local Food Act the opportunity for food banks to have a readily available source of local food to augment the other donations that are made.”
He said it was always important because children learn better when they have nutritious food to eat. Supporting local food was also a significant factor because it helps strengthen local economies.
“Local food, fruits, vegetables, and meats, when it comes to quality and food safety, Ontario grown fruits and vegetables are certainly the best in the world,” Leal said. “And we want to make sure people in our society that face challenges every day get an opportunity to have access to this quality food.”
