Nanaimo students in need will be able to start their day with breakfast as Nanaimo-Ladysmith Schools Foundation continues working with Loaves and Fishes Community Food Bank.
Loaves and Fishes’ Food 4U Recovery Program, which sees food near the best-before date collected for distribution, has provided food to schools for about three years, but Crystal Dennison, foundation executive director, said not all schools had the resources for pickup. Her organization will support the schools with bringing food to them in 2017-18.
The foundation teams with Breakfast Club of Canada to provide breakfast to students, with the club providing financial support and juice donations, and the move will help the foundation stretch its food dollars, Dennison said.
“There is so much food that’s available at the food bank that we’re hoping that we can start accessing some of that food and bringing it to the schools, sort of taking on a different role,” said Dennison. “We’re going to still be working with the Breakfast Clubs of Canada to provide financial support, but we’re also trying to provide additional support by maybe doing group purchasing on food or food recovery, just kind of helping them to co-ordinate.”
Dennison said the need for meal programs has increased in her three years with the foundation.
“When I started at the foundation, there were eight schools that were receiving support for their breakfast programs and last year we increased that to 11 … and this year we’ve received requests from three additional schools,” said Dennison. “We’re just trying to respond to the requests that are coming in from the schools because the schools know who they’re serving and the number of students that are requiring support and we’re here to try and pull the community together to support the needs around those breakfast programs.”
Peter Sinclair, Loaves and Fishes’ executive director, said his organization tries to mitigate child poverty in Nanaimo.
“We’re seeing over 1,000 different youths use our service every month, so the numbers are pretty staggering and that doesn’t include the youth that are served through the other agencies that we provide food to, that’s just the kids who utilize our services, so there’s certainly a significant need in the community specifically for children needing food to eat,” said Sinclair.