Written by Toni Lavigne-Conway | Special to the Valley Gazette
Clearly, there isn’t a household anywhere, regardless of income and ability, that hasn’t felt the sting of rising costs for everyday essentials like utilities, transportation, and food.
Nationally, Food Banks Canada indicates that food bank use has doubled in five years, and nearly one in four people in Canada now live in food-insecure households.
Locally, food instability is happening at an alarming rate and our Madawaska Valley Food Bank (MVFB) has become a lifeline for families, ensuring our neighbours don’t go hungry.
Serving a wide catchment area, including Combermere, Palmer Rapids, Madawaska, Whitney, and Barry’s Bay, the MVFB is a busy operation, feeding an average of 300 people every second week; an astounding 7,800 people a year. According to their statistics, this number represents a 260% increase since 2019.
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a food bank day to observe the day’s operation.
Operational Process
Although the food bank day doesn’t officially start until 8:00 AM, recipients were already lined up by 7:30 AM. Volunteers had arrived even earlier to prepare for what was a very efficient and valuable distribution.
Operating out of a rented garage located on 8 Martin Street, the majority of the operation takes place outside. Cars lined up along Dunn Street and into the laneway space behind the property towards Martin Street, where the collection takes place.
The first point of contact was with volunteers Terry Zardeleza and Pat Trajanovski who delivered a friendly welcome to recipients, referring to their clipboards for the information needed to check people in.
“Our list is generated by previous information about the last food bank and any new registrants that may arrive on the day,” Terry explained. They regularly update the database information to generate a list for the day using previous food bank numbers. “It helps us with the check-in process and also to guesstimate how many families we will need to prepare for that week,” she added. “Our numbers are very important because that feeds into Renfrew County, which feeds into the province, and that determines the percentage of food we get from the Renfrew County food bank and funding.”
I watched as Pat and Terry confirmed their information with users and then communicated the number of members per family for that user through walkie-talkies to the volunteers in the garage, who attend to the next part of the process, where most of the frozen foods are packaged.
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