The rising cost of food and fuel here is putting more demand than ever on a city food bank that is seeking new ways to keep its larder stocked.
“With rising cost of food and things like that, the food is not coming in as much. It’s a little tighter for people and they aren’t able to donate as much,” Jacinthe Irving, volunteer co-ordinator with the Ottawa Food Bank, said yesterday.
Growing demand has the organization calling for more donations and urging the co-ordination of more food drives, such as the one that yesterday delivered 104,000 pounds of food to the Michael Street facility.
The Eastern Ontario Landlord Organization (EOLO) made the delivery to cap its Spring Hope Food Drive, which saw the tenants of 179 buildings donate food that was collected by 30 Roger’s Cable trucks on April 29.
New, innovative drives are ways to help the food bank keep its cupboards from running bare.
“Anytime is a good time to give to the food bank, but sometimes things just come together and get a success like this,” said EOLO chair John Dickie.
The collected food will allow the food bank to stretch their food purchases for the next few months, said Irving.
“It’s going to give us that extra push to get us to the summer, but unfortunately in the summer it’s going to happen all over again.”
Summers are trying for food banks, since more donors leave town even as more parents are looking after children at home for summer vacation.
The food bank still needs volunteers for its door-to-door summer food drive, The Capital City Blitz, on June 5.
-tim.wieclawski@metronews.ca
