Help ease the need

Amid holiday bargain-hunting and thoughts of New Year’s festivities it’s all too easy to overlook the less fortunate. That’s regrettable. This traditional time of good cheer is also when need is particularly great, yet the Daily Bread Food Bank is struggling to meet its Holiday Drive goals.

The agency’s campaign ends Wednesday but it remains well short of its target of raising $2.5 million and gathering one million pounds of food. As of Monday, it was still short by about $500,000 and in need of another 485,000 pounds of provisions.

It’s vital that the food bank reaches its goals. For many families it could mean “a difference between going to bed hungry and not going to bed hungry,” Gail Nyberg, Daily Bread’s executive director, said Monday.

Families living “close to the edge” tend to be particularly pinched right now, having spent a bit more on their children than at other times of the year. So they rely on food banks more heavily than before. “We usually have a fairly big uptake in January,” Nyberg explained.

To meet that need and help people through these cold winter months the food bank is asking for donations of non-perishable food items, especially peanut butter, canned fish, tinned fruits and vegetables, dried or canned beans, cereals, rice, pasta, sauces, and baby food and formula. These can be dropped off at area fire halls and participating grocery stores.

Holiday Drive cash donations are used to supplement such donations with purchased food, to fuel the agency’s trucks, and to help in a variety of other ways.

Daily Bread doesn’t act alone. It serves as a distribution hub providing provisions and support to almost 200 food programs, making it the largest provider of food relief in the Greater Toronto Area. Last year it distributed almost nine million pounds of food to member agencies and provided food hampers for more than 700,000 visits. That’s well worth supporting.

Time is growing short but this year’s Holiday Drive can still end on a high note with its goals exceeded. Please give and help make that happen.