Focused effort on helping others
Summerside Christian Council leading food audit initiative
SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. – The pressures on the Summerside community are many, and more people than ever are finding themselves in need of a helping hand.
In response, the Summerside Christian Council, an affiliation of several local churches, has taken it upon itself to complete a food audit for the community.
The goal is to create a master list of the services provided by all the different local service organizations. Who offers food boxes? Where can people go if they need emergency furnace oil? What churches offer grocery cards? The list of questions the audit seeks to answer is long.
The idea to do the audit stems from conversations that were had in the aftermath of post-tropical storm Dorian in 2019, said Rev. Colin Nicolle of the Anglican Parish of St. Mary & St. John.
That experience helped bring the churches on the council closer together. Previously the organization was more of a loose affiliation, but the effort of responding to a shared disaster helped the various congregations realize they could contribute more to the community if they worked together.
More recently, the council was looking for a group project that could help the community and settled on the audit.
“That just kind of got us thinking about, ‘what do we all offer' and ‘what is the community offering around us,' because it made us aware that nobody really knew what anyone else was doing. And as (food insecurity) was becoming a much bigger issue, really just in the last few years, we were concerned about addressing it,” said Nicolle.
“As we began to kind of ask around, we got back a lot of feedback that there are all these groups doing stuff, but nobody really seems to know what anyone else is doing. That's important information to have.”
Nicolle said most parishes do what they can to support community members in need.
His own does, and the need has been spiking for two years.
“It's not just that the numbers have increased, it's that the places people are coming from are different,” he said.
“Those for whom it was bad, it has gotten worse, and those for whom it was OK, it has gotten bad.”
In his experience, it is food, specifically, that is the biggest issue.
“It's food. I don't have a lot of people coming to me saying ‘I need gas money.' People don't come to us expecting us to put them up in a house or anything. It's food. People are just like, ‘I need to get milk, I need to get bread, I need to get something to eat.' People are just hungry.”
Ivy Inkpen, a local advocate who has been dubbed Summerside's “homeless helper” said she's glad the audit is being done and sees it as a needed project.
“Food security is an issue here in Summerside for sure,” said Inkpen.
“I think this is a great idea to be able to have something co-ordinated and published in the paper where people (can) know where to get food.”
Inkpen added that the need is great, and she encouraged anyone who can able to support their local food box program and the Summerside Community Fridge – when it opens again – to do so.
Work on the food audit is ongoing. The goal is to have the resulting document completed within the next few months and to keep it as a living document into the future.
The Summerside Christian Council hopes that with the success of this first project, its members will be able to work together on other community projects in the future, especially in providing assistance in times of emergency, said Nicolle.
“At the end of the day, I'm not really sure how many churches there are in Summerside … but all of us have buildings, all of us have halls, all of us have resources," he said.
“We can do a lot when we work together."
Anyone who would like to contribute a service to the audit can contact Nicolle at rev. nicolle@gmail.com or message the council's Facebook page.