Souls Harbour in urgent need of donations
Summer sees pantry stocks drop but requests for help remain the same
Souls Harbour Rescue Mission is looking for 5,000 pounds of food to fill its pantries for the summer as the weather warms and donations peter out.
Deana Struble, marketing manager at Souls Harbour, said donations typically drop off between 25 per cent and 30 per cent over the summer months compared to donations through the winter.
This can put Souls Harbour in a tight spot.
“We run mostly off donations so any dip in food donations makes it difficult for us to be able to feed the people that we need to feed,” said Struble.
Souls Harbour feeds an average of 200 people Monday through Friday evenings.
The Regina Food Bank finds itself in a similar position every summer.
“Our work is a 12-month work and sometimes the resources can fall off over the summer, so we have to keep the message out that there’s still a need,” said food bank CEO Steve Compton. “We’re still serving a large amount of families over the summer.
“There’s never a bad time to give, but summer’s a great time to give.”
He said on average, the food bank is serving 200 to 250 households a day, and working with more than 9,500 requests for service every month. Although there are slight fluctuations in numbers throughout the year, Compton said requests stay pretty steady over the summer.
Struble and Compton both recognize that summer is a busy time and food donations are not top-ofmind, but the organizations continue to rely on donations to keep the doors open.
“This is our only summer campaign,” Struble said of Souls Harbour’s Stock Up for Summer campaign, which is currently running. “We’re hoping to get everything on this one.”
If Souls Harbour doesn’t reach their donation goal, the organization will have to start buying food. Struble said there is a small budget for food, but that dipping into these funds is always a stretch for the organization.
For Compton, fewer donations means serving fewer people.
“It certainly does mean that sometimes we’re able to give less, and in an extreme situation, I guess, it would be a situation where we could give less often as well too, but we’re optimistic that once again the community will rise to the challenge and we won’t have to consider those options,” he said.
Souls Harbour’s campaign runs until June 20. Donation bins are located at the Rochdale, Quance and south Albert Co-op store locations, Harvard Broadcasting, the Regina Police Service station and some local churches.
The mission is looking for any non-perishable items, but specific items of need are: Canned tomatoes of all kinds, beans, pasta, pasta sauces, soups, rice, coffee, sugar, coffee whitener, canned fruit and canned vegetables.
Compton said the food bank is always accepting donations, whether that’s by volunteering or through a food or financial donation.
...Any dip in food donations makes it difficult for us to be able to feed the people that we need to feed.