Just received this email from Heather Scott of SHARE Family Services saying their food bank is empty.
Myself and a group of wrestlers from my former company, ECCW Pro-Wrestling, are scheduled this Wednesday evening to go in and help load up for the Christmas season so seeing that our work may be reduced is heartbreaking.
I have volunteered in food banks ever since I was a teenager and this is the first time I can EVER remember that the food bank is empty at Christmas time. If you can help out, please contact Heather right away at 604-529-5119 or 604-816-5958.
Here is her email:
Hi Everyone,
I want to thank you for joining us for Hamper Packing this week. We are looking forward to some great evenings and appreciate your support very much. I hope this doesn’t feel like we’re asking too much but since you are already so supportive of the Food Bank, it made sense to put this appeal to you.
The Food Bank is out of food. We distributed more hampers than normal last week and that decreased the amount of food in inventory. After June, we normally have about 2 weeks of food in the Food Bank at any given time. This past week, the numbers of people at the food bank jumped and there isn’t enough food left to help with the Christmas Hampers.
Every year we make a large purchase of food to make sure there are enough staples for the Christmas hampers. Then, we rely on the food in the food bank to augment the hampers. Normally, a family can come once every two weeks for a food hamper. At Christmas, we close the food bank so the hampers need to stretch to 3 weeks so Christmas Hampers are typically larger. The challenge is, there’s not enough food in the food bank this week to augment the hampers and there’s not enough food to get us through the first week in January.
The situation could change at any moment though. We know for sure, that the food from our local schools will be picked up and delivered Thursday and Friday. We also know that there are many food drives in the community. The food just hasn’t arrived yet. While we can’t say just exactly how much food is arriving, our experience has been that the food donated at Christmas usually gets us to May or June.
That brings us back to this week. We have 748 hampers left to pack in the next few days (1,500 boxes) and there isn’t enough food to augment what we’ve purchased. If you can, please bring some food with you for Christmas Hamper Packing. Once we sort it, it will be packed into a Christmas Hamper that night. We need things like canned meals, Kraft Dinner, canned tomatoes, stuffing, canned ham, gravy and canned cranberry. Your donation of food will help a family through the next three weeks.
Thank you for your support – so much. As an update – 1,543 households have registered for Christmas Hampers this year. That number will continue to grow for the next couple of weeks. Last year, a total of 1,677 households registered.
We’re looking forward to seeing each and everyone one of you. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Heather Scott, CFRE
Director of Development
SHARE Family and Community Services
#200 – 25 King Edward St.
Coquitlam, BC V3K 4S8
604-529-5119|604-816-5958
Dave,
We’re donating food on a daily basis to our kids’ elementary school (Glen), but it seems like more needs to be done. Who can we challenge to make the difference for these Tri-Cities families this Christmas?
K