May 5-9 is Hunger Awareness Week in Canada, and Lac La Biche's Waskaysoo Food Bank is looking for gift cards to help purchase perishable food items they can't keep in stock.
May 5-9 is Hunger Awareness Week in Canada, and Lac La Biche's Waskaysoo Food Bank is doing a drive to help address food insecurity.
Food banks across Canada are holding events and drives, and in Lac La Biche, the food bank is specifically looking for gift cards to help purchase perishable food items they can't keep in stock.
"We do have a pretty balanced supply of dry goods right now, but food costs are going up and... we could give (gift cards) to families so that they could get milk, meat, cheese, all the perishables that we can't provide here," said Erin Thomas, family support coordinator for the food bank. "When people call and ask what they can give, this will be our big push for the week."
According to Thomas, while the number of total clients at the food bank has stayed stable, they are seeing an increase in clients using the bank for the first time.
"We've always seen the working poor as one of the sort of demographics at the food bank, but that demographic is exploding," she said. "We are seeing an increase in new people, two-parent families where both of them are employed but the employment just isn't paying enough to pay the bills."
The increase in new clients can be explained by a new situation Thomas called "food insecurity."
"That term refers to the state people get into when they can't be assured of where their next meal is coming from or where the next meal for their kids are coming from," she said. "You could give them a week's worth of food and they would be still living in that anxiety, and they would still be stuffing their pockets with extras, not out of a sense of entitlement or greed, but because there's an incredible anxiety that they've lived with over a long period of time.
"After the little bit of food that we've given them runs out, they once again don't know where there next meal is going to come from."
Most of the food bank’ s promotion for Hunger Awareness Week will be done over Facebook and through community partners. The food bank asks that gift cards be in $10, $25 and $50 increments. For more information, contact the food bank at (780) 623-3249.
