Hunger doesn’t take a holiday
Project SHARE is asking residents to help the Niagara Falls food bank keep its shelves well stocked during what is traditionally the slower summer months for donations.
As part of the annual Every Plate Full campaign, all food banks across Canada are encouraging donations leading up to the summer.
“Summer months are when we see the least amount of donations coming in, but the need is still there,” said Pam Sharp, director of community engagement for Project SHARE.
On Tuesday, the Stanley Avenue service agency launched its One Bag Challenge initiative.
It’s an approach food banks in other communities have taken, where a person donates one bag of food, posts a photo of the donation online and then challenges five friends to do the same.
Sharp said Mayor Jim Diodati kicked off the challenge Tuesday.
“The hope is that will just kind of continue and the more people we can get to donate one bag of food the more people we’re going to be able to feed,” she said.
“It’s a campaign that was started in B.C. by … a very small food bank and was extremely successful to the point that they needed to rent a truck to store all of their extra food donations that had come in. We’re hoping that it might be something unique and different that might spin off here. It’s a really easy way for everybody to just give a little bit, but have a really big impact.”
Sharp said she believes during the summer months, a lot of people are on vacation and planning their holidays with family.
“They’re not necessarily thinking about the need that exists in our community,” she said.
“We’re kind of programmed to think about it at the holidays, it’s really incorporated into our giving seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas … but unfortunately in our community the need is really year round and we’re not going to see any less numbers over the summer months, even though we would like to.”
Sharp said Project SHARE is finding itself purchasing “more and more food, so that support from the community is really important to us, especially at this time of year.”
She said on average, the food bank sees about 100 families per day, but most days it’s more than that.
“We’re seeing like 160 families coming through our door — 180 families — it really is at an all-time high, unfortunately.”
Sharp said Project SHARE’s most needed food items include peanut butter, baby food and formula, pasta sauce, and fruits and vegetables.
She said the fruits and vegetables can be fresh, frozen or canned.
“Whatever people are comfortable donating, including produce that they may grow in their own home garden.”