The Maple Ridge food bank, Friends In Need Food Bank (FIN), ran out of food an hour before closing last Friday.
There was no produce, deli items, or bread available for distribution.
“We ran out. We had no produce, we had no deli, we had no bread to offer our clients, and we still had clients coming in an hour later,” said executive director Kim Boekhorst.
The empty shelves couldn’t come at a worse time. There is a record demand for FIN’s services, with more than 1,000 households being served in April alone.
“Our motto is that no one in our community is to go hungry and we will continue to strive for that.”
It has seen a continued 15 per cent increase, year over year, in visits.
“We depend a lot on something called our Perishable Food Recovery Program, which recovers food from our local grocers seven days a week,” said Boekhorst. “We then repurpose that back to our clients. Eighty-one per cent of that is then used for the purpose of human consumption.”
Unfortunately, FIN is seeing less from those grocers.
“Our grocery partners are not able to contribute as much as maybe they have been able to contribute in the past.”
“We saw that in the difference between what we saw as donations in the month of March versus the month of April and an 18 per cent decrease, yet our numbers continue to rise.”
FIN is seeing an increase in working families struggling to keep up with rising costs.
“In the month of April, we happen to see the highest increase in unique households entering our facility and looking for our services.”
Another demographic that is being affected is seniors, who are choosing between food, rent, and medication.
“It was five short years ago that we were seeing upwards of 500 unique households visiting our facility every week and now we’re over 1,000, five short years later, right? So, I’m sure that this is happening across the province.”
Boekhorst says he is seeing a record number of first-time clients.
“Life becomes less affordable, people start to gravitate further east, and Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows happens to be one of those destinations. We start seeing an influx of population and therefore also we’re going to see a larger draw from our community.”
While the demand increases, FIN only has so much it can draw from. They are not getting an increase in resources.
“We’re trying to do more with less.”
FIN gets its financial support from the community in the form of donors and from grants.
“We do have a very generous community that we’ve been in the community for quite some time, since the mid ’80s. And therefore, we’ve built a reputation of being out there for our vulnerable community and helping.”
Boekhorst says they continue to try and engage with all levels of government to advocate on their goals.
“We don’t necessarily have a particular food drive or such. We work with community partners like Save on Foods Group who will allow us to have rounding up on their tills that will go to benefit the food banks. But there is no specific food drives per se. There’s a year-round need.”
There tends to be an uptick in donations during the Christmas period but not the rest of the year.
“It kind of falls off the radar from the general public.”