Food Banks of Saskatchewan launched a $6 million province-wide campaign to help families struggling during the Covid-19 pandemic and to make sure they’re fed for the next six months.
With more people needing to be fed due to the impact of Covid-19, the Food Banks of Saskatchewan have said they need significant donations for food, delivery services to help with physical distancing, and staff. In an average month, the 32 food banks in Saskatchewan support approximately 40,000 residents and that number will only increase due to Covid-19.
To do their part, the Saskatchewan Construction Association, Saskatchewan Heavy Construction Association, Saskatchewan Industrial & Mining Suppliers Association, and Merit Contractors Association of Saskatchewan are working together on their Hammering Hunger campaign with a goal of raising $1 million to feed all food bank users in the province for a month.
“Our food banks require urgent additional resources to continue serving the community while protecting staff, volunteers, and their clients. Our food banks are seeing as much as a 50 per cent increase in the number of users as a result of the Covid-19 state of emergency. While the number of users has already increased, the amount of food donated and the number of volunteers available has decreased as people respond to the crisis and follow government direction to stay home,” they said in a group statement.
“Our local food banks need our help more than ever in providing emergency nutrition. Now is the time for us to stand together and help those in need. At minimum, $6 million is needed to continue their critical work in the coming months. It is still too early to fully gauge the effects of this situation and the cost may be higher than $6 million depending on the increase in users, new ways of distributing food, and the length of the crisis.”
“We work together, let’s support our community together. Please join us in ensuring no one is hungry during these difficult times. DCG Philanthropic Services are joining in to support our efforts and donating their fundraising work for this $1 million industry campaign to ensure every single dollar goes into feeding people across Saskatchewan. Let’s ensure, together, families across our province are able to put food on the table during this unpredictable time.”
Duncan Construction involved
Duncan Construction in Spy Hill is affiliated with the Saskatchewan Heavy Construction Association and their safety co-ordinator/head of human resources, Sherry-Lee Duncan, said they jumped at the opportunity to help with the Hammering Hunger campaign.
“When we were asked as a company if we would like to pledge money towards this campaign, we said absolutely because as a road builder we’re very fortunate to be considered an essential service,” said Duncan. “We’re thankful for that, but there’s a lot of people who aren’t and that gets kind of frightening when you think about how many people aren’t working.”
“We have a bit of a blind eye to it with most of our community working with the mines — it might not affect us as much, but I know there’s people out there who need help.”
The local support has been a key in Duncan’s eyes, she wants everybody in the smaller communities throughout the province who have been impacted by Covid-19 to have the opportunity to ask for help.
“Nutrien is a big part of it locally and D.J. Miller & Sons Construction in Langenburg they’re also a part of it as well,” said Duncan. “I think it’s good for our communities to see we reach out and do things provincially and our associations that we are a part of are reaching out provincially to help everybody.”
“The thing that I really like about this is that in the pledge form we can actually delegate where the donation needs to go to.”
Getting the word out there is important for Duncan. She says that the more attention something like this gets, the more people will realize there’s a need for donations, while at the same time showing those who need help that there’s a way to get it during such an unknown time.
“I thought it was really important for us to try and put something in our papers locally,” said Duncan. “We’re not the big city, but I think a lot of local people don’t understand that we do have neighbours that are out of work and might be accessing these food hampers or maybe there’s even people out there who don’t know how to access the food hampers.”
“A couple years ago we went and volunteered at Christmas time for the Regina Food Bank and it was a real eye-opening event. For me, locally, I only really knew about food hampers at Christmas time and I hadn’t really thought much about them. Like with soup kitchens in the city, something of that nature is probably needed everywhere. People need our help.”
Need for increased support:
Most food banks have seen an increase in demand of up to 60 per cent.
Over 40 per cent of those food banks are supporting are children.
At the Battlefords District Food and Resource Centre, 24 per cent of the families from April 1-17 had never used the food bank before and 60 per cent had not used the food bank this year.
The Regina Food Bank’s hamper distribution has gone up 60 per cent, which is stretching volunteers and depleting supplies. Much of this demand is coming from people who are first-time visitors to the Regina Food Bank and never thought they would need support.
Melfort Food Bank demand has increased over 10 per cent, however 30-40 per cent of those served are new people who have never visited the food bank before.
Most of the food banks only have a 10-14 day supply of food.
With the need of physical distancing to help prevent the spread of Covid-19, food banks have had to limit volunteers and it has led to the loss of 1,600-1,800 volunteer hours a month at the Saskatoon Food Bank Learning Centre.
Regina has shifted to volunteers supporting their call centre and delivery operations only, resulting in a loss of over 1,000 volunteer hours a month.
Impact of donations in Saskatchewan:
$35,000 ensures that everyone in the province will be fed in one day.
$125,000 is 50 per cent of the cost to feed those in need for one week.
$250,000 covers the costs of all 32 food banks in the province to feed their clients for a full week.
$1 million will provide food to all users of the food banks in the province for a month.
