Food banks forum in Sharbot Lake

Jeff Green | Dec 09, 2010

Photo: Jeanne Jenner, Sue Clinton and Sandy Singers in Sharbot Lake.

The Lanark Frontenac Lennox and Addington NDP Riding Association held a timely forum on food banks in Sharbot Lake on December 5. Participants from Perth and Kingston were in attendance, as were Sue Clinton from the Loughborough Christmas and Emergency Relief Committee and Brenda Piat from the North Frontenac Food Bank.

The divergent experiences of the operators brought a lot of different issues into play

Sandy Singers from the Partners in Mission food Bank in Kingston brought a more urban perspective since his agency is a full-time operation that distributes almost $1 million each year in food donations. The Partners in Mission also deal with unique issues, such as the impact on the food bank of family members of people incarcerated in Kingston's numerous prisons.

Jeanne Jenner is currently affiliated with the Salvation Army in Perth, which provides hot meal and Chrismas hamper programs, and was formerly with the Perth and District Food Bank. “We often face the opinion, when it comes to poverty and homelessness issues in Perth, that the solution is to ‘buy them a bus ticket’ to Ottawa. This kind of denial of the problems that the working poor face in our own community extends to Perth City Council, I’m afraid,” she said.

Sydenham-based Sue Clinton from the Loughborough Christmas and Emergency Relief Committee, which prepares Christmas hampers for about 60 families and provides emergency food to 37 families throughout the year, talked about some of the issues that plague impoverished people in rural areas. A nutritionist herself, Clinton also talked about the need to teach people how to prepare and eat healthy meals. “Food has everything to do with health. If you teach people how to eat healthier you empower them. We see children of food bank recipients becoming recipients themselves, and we need to work to end this cycle. One thing we are doing is putting recipes in the food box, and encouraging people to use the Good Food Box as well as our services. Jamie Oliver, the famous chef, won an award for trying to help the Americans improve their health. Every child before they leave school should be able prepare 10 meals to save their life. Those are the kinds of solutions we need to foster,” Clinton said.

Brenda Piat, who introduced the panel on behalf of the North Frontenac Food Bank, which handles about 275 food requests annually, said that a major portion of the clientele who are served by the food bank are recipients of disability pensions, but she has been unable to convince the workers who administer the disability payments to refer their clients to the food bank. “To me those workers are in the social services and they should concern themselves with the food and other needs of their clients,” she said.

“In Kingston the Ontario Works and Disability supports program workers just send their clients over to us, which is another kind of problem. We are a charitable organisation, and receive no government funding, but the government is effectively asking us to subsidise their support programs,” said Sandy Singers of Partners in Mission.

All of the panellists confirmed that the Christmas season is their best time of year for fundraising. In some ways the smaller rural services expressed the most optimism about their ability to raise funds. “Over the years people have become more and more aware of our need,” said Brenda Piat. “Most community events accept food donations for admission; people ask for donations to the food bank when their loved ones pass away, and we have even received bequests.”

“We send a letter to our donors in the fall, and that is one of our best ways to raise cash, along with the food boxes in the local food stores, and fundraising events like Vision Soup and others” said Sue Clinton.

“We are dependent on the kindness of strangers” said Sandy Singers “and our budget is definitely made in November and December. But our donors don’t want to be overburdened by us. What I find is that people don’t want us to badger them.”

All of the participants realise that what they offer is a limited solution, at best. “All of the good work done by hot meal programs, soup kitchen and food banks is just a band aid, not the answer and certainly not even a solution at all,” said Sandy Singers. He also said that food banks and food programs are not really in a position to get overly political because of the rules for charitable organizations and the fact that they receive donations from people of all political stripes, but collecting information and providing statistics is something they can do.

“The Ontario Association of Food Banks calculated the cost of poverty in Ontario at billions of dollars a year,” Singers said.

From inter-generational poverty, lack of budgeting skills, social and employment problems, mental health issues and drug problems, the reasons that food banks remain busy are diverse and complicated. The panel members agreed that it would take political action to transform community concerns about food and poverty into a policy priority. Until then they all said they will muddle through as best they can.

The North Frontenac Food Bank can be reached through Northern Frontenac Community Services at 613-279-3151 and the Loughborough Christmas and Emergency Relief Committee can be reached through voicemail at 613-572-6004.