The letter states in bold that ‘Your Moose Jaw & District Food Bank is in crisis.’
It goes on to explain that: “With usage climbing to rates never-before-seen in our history, and the rates of corporate and private donations rapidly decreasing, we have made the difficult decision to reduce the access households have to our services. This has been devastating to us as a team and is being used as a last-ditch effort to avoid closing our doors entirely. The closure of our Food Bank, in a perfect world, would signal the eradication of food insecurity. The stark reality is, with no services, thousands of our loved ones will go hungry every day. 40% of our clients are children.”
Moore says many of the food bank’s clients would not have needed their services two and a half years ago.
“There’s no shortage of food. There’s still a huge amount of food waste in our country. … Yesterday, Food Banks Canada sent us out an email, and we’ve been working on this as members of Food Banks Canada,” Moore explained.
“It’s a call to action to our government to step up … The cost of groceries and living is skyrocketing, we’re seeing families who should not be accessing a food bank, who wouldn’t have accessed the food bank two and a half years ago … They can’t afford to buy groceries and they can’t afford to pay the bills, and it’s really sad.”
There are two ways to help with Food Banks Canada’s call to action. Firstly, letters can be sent to all levels of government representation at foodbankscanada.ca/advocacy-government-relations/geb. Canadians wishing to help can also sign a petition at foodbankscanada.ca/advocacy-government-relations/petition.
Food Banks Canada hopes to reach 15,000 letters sent and 40,000 petition signatures before the launch of the Hunger Count in October.
To keep their doors open, the MJFB is making several changes as soon as possible, including moving to a shopping model by October 1; creating educational programs to ensure clients know how to use every ingredient in every food hamper; and providing different ethnic food choices for newcomer clients from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Moore reiterated that the MJFB does not receive any regular government funding. It relies on local community support and on grants that have to be reapplied for on an ongoing basis — with no guarantee of adequate funding even if approved.
[Editorial clarification: The MJFB does not receive any government grants or funding.]
“The entire country is facing this … crisis,” Moore said. “Food banks all over the country are applying for these grants, and so they’re spread a lot thinner. We’re not seeing the same response to our applications for purchasing food. We’re just getting a fraction of what we’re asking for.
“And so, we had to take a look at it and we did an inventory and realized that, yeah, we probably only have enough to last us till the end of August if we don’t make some changes quickly.”
Moore said the staff at the Moose Jaw & District Food Bank will do everything in their power to avoid any form of closure or shutdown.
“The state of our country is not great right now, as most of us know, so this is a call of action to the government to make some changes, and to take the burden off of non-profit organizations like food banks, who are carrying this load and being forced to ask our already-struggling community members to hand out even more of their hard-earned dollars.”
