Food security an urgent need for GTA’s most vulnerable
A co-ordinated effort by 30 United Way agencies is tackling one of the biggest challenges of the coronavirus pandemic: access to food
For Ifeyinwa Okoye, it was the jollof rice.
“The first time I got it in my food basket,” she says, “I called my contact at the Delta Family Resource Centre and said, ‘Wow, this is food from back home!’”
Okoye is a 40-year-old single mother from Nigeria with two children (aged two and four) who arrived in Canada in 2018. “She knew it was there and told me it was coming in every basket. It was such a surprise.”
While the jollof rice stood out, the basket of groceries is what Okoye is thankful for. “It’s been a lifesaver. I have been part of the food program since the pandemic. I get groceries and cooked meals and I can’t thank them enough,” says Okoye, who lives on the border of North York and Etobicoke.
‘Them’ is a group of United Way agencies — 30 in total, including the Delta Family Resource Centre where Okoye visited regularly — that recognized a sudden and pressing need the pandemic brought about this past spring: the need for food in the community.
“Food security was already an issue in North Etobicoke. But the pandemic made it worse,” says Amra Munawar, executive director of the Rexdale Community Hub (RCH), the backbone agency behind the co-ordinated effort. “It impacted small businesses. So many people lost their jobs, which made the food security issue more serious.”
Of particular concern were the community’s already vulnerable populations, such as seniors, single mothers and newcomers to Canada. As a response, the agencies — including the RCH working closely with the North Etobicoke Cluster Coordination table, an initiative led by United Way Greater Toronto and the City of Toronto — put their heads together to find ways to get nutritious food to the residents of the community.
But where to start? It began by developing a list of who needed help. “We collected information from our partner organizations about community needs and created a central database system to ensure we’re not overlapping households,” says Munawar.
This is where people such as Cynthia Pommells, family resource program manager with the Delta Family Resource Centre, came in. “I manage about eight staff members and they each connected with approximately 30 families over the phone to find out what their needs were,” says Pommells. “We found out who needed food because they have young children and are afraid of taking them out or who has lost employment.”
The table then created a food hamper program; to date, hampers have been provided to 525 households or 1,114 individuals across North Etobicoke. Each hamper lasts two to three weeks and serves two specific vulnerable populations: seniors and single or pregnant mothers — two communities that would have difficulty venturing out for groceries.
And to enhance those hampers, culturally sensitive food items (such as jollof rice) have been donated by Malton-based Seva Food Bank and a $10,000 donation via United Way’s Local Love Fund. “The culturally appropriate food was something extremely important that we learned from the community — that people were not getting those items from food banks — so we focused on that,” says Munawar.
At the same time, other vulnerable populations in the community also needed food. So, a hot prepared meal program was created, thanks to 24,725 prepared meals donated by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the Second Harvest Food Bank and the United Way. On top of that, another 1,000 meals were donated by Marina Boys and 900 meals by the Feed it Forward initiative.
From this, a new hot prepared meal program emerged. Like
the food baskets, residents wanted culturally sensitive hot meals as well. And so began another collaboration, this one with Feed the Frontlines Toronto, which involved distributing another 7,755 meals — only this one had a multipurpose mission to support four small businesses in the community that had felt the financial toll of COVID-19.
Collectively, the reach of these programs is unprecedented, considering they didn’t exist pre-pandemic. In total, 34,790 meals and food hampers (along with gift cards, hygiene kits, pet food, Uber vouchers, chocolates and cloth masks) have
been distributed in North Etobicoke.
Initially, though, distributing these meals and food hampers brought about a conundrum. “We had some volunteers but most were seniors and we didn’t want to expose them by volunteering,” says Pommells. “So we reached out to another agency with volunteers and we recruited them for our programs as well.”
One of those volunteers is Bibi Hack, who has donated her time with numerous United Way agencies over the past decade. “I used to be at Delta once or twice a week helping out. But now I’m there three days a week
for a few hours each day,” says Hack.
“It was an adjustment but my family doesn’t mind.”
Hack helps out simply because she can. “I have a car and I can move around more than some people,” she says. This is despite the fact that Hack is 65 years old — and a member of the very population that COVID-19 can hit the hardest.
But she trusts her safety protocols. “I sanitize, I wear my face mask, I social distance and I’m OK. We’re so cautious about everything that comes in and goes out,” she says, adding that it’s the good feelings she gets from helping people such as Okoye that makes volunteering worth it.
Frontline volunteers such as Hack and co-ordinators such as Pommells are now hearing other things from the community. “They’re concerned about the sustainability of the program. They want to know how long it will go?” says Pommells. “Even after COVID-19, families will still need support accessing food. We’re wrestling with this right now. When will this end and then, what do we tell this community? That’s the question.”