It’s been quite the year for food banks in Lethbridge, with both the Lethbridge Food Bank and Interfaith Food Bank seeing a rise in demand.
According to Mac Nichol, Executive Director of the Lethbridge Food Bank, they purchased around $400,000 worth of food this year, last year they spent $250,000.
Nichol says they have a bracket of those that use the food bank, and lately have seen those brackets change.
“We have a group of our population that accesses the food bank and are in need of that, then there’s a little group in what we call the ‘fragile’ group, they can take care of themselves and don’t need to go to the food bank but also can’t donate, and then there’s a bracket above that, they’re getting by and maybe have a little extra to put food in the box at the grocery store,” says Nichol.
“All of those have dropped down, that fragile group is now coming to the food bank and that group that was able to donate is now in that fragile group and because of that we are starting to see the pinch on both sides,” he adds.
Danielle McIntyre with the Interfaith Food Bank says they’ve handled well over a million pounds of food this year alone. They’ve been seeing a lot more double income families, or people who wouldn’t normally need the food bank asking for help.
“More and more working households, still see a lot of single adults who live alone as the fastest growing group, that are needing support, and that’s primarily because it’s very difficult for a single individual to float all the costs associated with the household, rent, utilities, anything like that, on top of the face you have to feed yourself too.”
When it comes to some highs of the year for both food banks, Nichol says the Target Hunger Campaign, which also supports the Interfaith Food Bank, was a definite high, just because the outcome is always unknown, but seeing the community come out and work together is always nice.
For McIntyre, one high has been the client advocacy program, which has helped over 600 people since it was implemented. The program allows Interfaith Food Bank to connect food bank users to social housing, allowing them a warm hand off to address any underlying issues with food insecurity.
Lows for the Lethbridge Food Bank, according to Nichol, is seeing clients who work full time coming to access the services.
“That’s hard to see, we always assume if you can work a 40 hour week job that you can take care of yourself, and its discouraging to see that that’s not the way anymore.”
For McIntyre, a big low for Interfaith Food Bank is struggling to keep food stock, having supply issues, and the cost of groceries has been a big challenge. She adds that where the food bank struggles with food donations, the community has been helping with financial donations, primarily online donations.
As for what both are looking to improve for 2024, McIntyre says that having a fully staffed volunteer crew is something they are looking forward to. Nichol is looking into changing some programs at the Lethbridge Food Bank, they currently run a mobile food support program, he’s looking to change that to a full mobile food bank so those who need to help don’t have to access the actual food bank.