Looking to stretch your dollar this holiday season? The Ottawa Food Bank offers a generous return.
While the food bank, as always, welcomes ketchup and baby formula, pasta and peanut butter, it’s hoping people will also make cash donations at grocery store checkouts until Dec. 24 through a program sponsored by Loblaws.
“When you give a dollar to the Ottawa Food Bank, it’s worth $5 of food,” says bank executive director Michael Maidment. “For example, earlier this week we received a shipment of tuna that was over 18,000 cans. When we order in that kind of quantity we can really stretch out the dollar because we get a great cost on it.”
Even while receiving tonnes of donated food, the agency spends $1.3 million a year on necessary items.
“Christmastime, for example, we buy turkeys, ham, perishables, milk, cheese, eggs, the kind of stuff that you couldn’t just drop in a bin in a grocery store,” says Maidment.
People are particularly generous with donations of non-perishable items in the weeks leading up to the holidays, Maidment says. In some cases, it’s children’s sports teams dropping off items they’ve collected. Meantime, cash comes from companies that forgo the office party to make a donation.
The main food bank works with 140 neighbourhood food banks and other agencies, including such organizations as the Ottawa Mission, Salvation Army and Shepherds of Good Hope, which provide hot meals to residents at shelters. The bank also will provide about four days worth of groceries to those who go directly to its headquarters attopping by the bank’s headquarters at 1317 Michael St.
Visits to Ottawa food banks are up five per cent over last year.
“We’ve just crossed over 51,000 people every single month for the first time in our 30-year history,” says Maidment, adding that the number of first-time users has increased by 34 per cent, representing 673 households this year compared to 502 in 2013.
“We’ve seen the number of seniors turning to a food bank increase and we are seeing a lot of people who have lost employment or suffer some sort of illness.”
This summer the Parkdale Food Centre gained attention when it asked not to receive items deemed unhealthy, such as hotdogs or Kraft dinner. Maidment says those kinds of donations continue to come in and be distributed. However, he wants people to consider giving what they would put in their own grocery cart.
“We ask for folks for the same kind of stuff they would feed to their own families,” he says.
Cash donations can be made at Loblaws, Your Independent Grocer and Real Canadian Superstore outlets, and at ottawafoodbank.ca.
If you are donating food, the food bank offers these suggestions:
- Whole-wheat cereal
- Dry pasta and sauce
- Juice (boxes and cans)
- Canned fish
- Meat and stews
- Canned fruit and canned vegetables
- Beans (canned or dry)
- Peanut butter
- Nutritious snacks
