Food bank needs help for Thanksgiving

By Lethbridge Herald on October 10, 2024.

Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman Volunteer Diane Starrenburg packs peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she previously made for those with no fixed address Wednesday at the Lethbridge Food Bank.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
LETHBRIDGE HERALD

With Thanksgiving around the corner, many families and individuals in need will be relying on the generosity of others to be able to be able to have some food on their table and the Lethbridge Food Bank is asking for donations, not only of food and money, but also of time through volunteering. 

Darren Babin, operations lead with the food bank, told the Herald Wednesday that they are in dire need of help from the community as they are seeing a big increase in people who rely on them for their meals. 

“Currently we are expecting about 900 households to visit us, as well as close to 800 homeless visits as well. We are definitely in need of donations, especially when it comes to this time of the year,” said Babin. 

He said they are in need of turkeys, chickens and hams as well as the “extras” for the Thanksgiving meal like stuffing, scallop potatoes, cranberry sauce and such. 

“We do not do anything overly special for Thanksgiving as Christmas is our main concentration point. However, there are a lot of organizations and institutions that do fundraising and food drives on our behalf during this time of the year,” said Babin. 

He added that even then, donations are always welcomed and needed as their demand is higher than ever before. 

“In the last two years we have doubled the amount of clients we’ve had and unfortunately our donations haven’t doubled,” said Babin. 

He explained that in previous years they were able to store food, but now whatever they receive is usually out the door within a day or so. They are also constantly purchasing food as they do not have enough donated sometimes. 

“We always really appreciate if people donate to our regular hamper items, which is any of the non-perishables that we provide like Kraft dinner, canned soup, canned fruit, canned vegetables and stuff like that,” said Babin.

He said when it comes to people’s dietary needs, they have a shelf where they keep gluten free items and in their fridge they have an area where they keep the halal meats as well. 

In terms of what happens with food donated to the food bank, Babin explained that nothing goes to waste and shared a little bit of the process from collection to distribution. 

He said they have regular scheduled pickups where their driver goes to stores, manufacturers, distributors and farmers to pick up food they wish to donate and they also accept donations dropped off by community members. 

“We weigh everything initially when we receive it, then we sort through it and then we get it prepared for distribution, basically anything that is not good enough to serve our clients goes to feeding livestock, as well as worm farms and another person actually farms crickets and cockroaches to feed lizards, so none of the food gets wasted,” said Babin.

He said they provide hampers of various sizes depending of the amount of people per household. And because they are unable to provide hampers for the homeless, they have what they call the NFA bags. 

“It is basically prepared food because the homeless do not have means to store food or prepare food. We provide them with ready to eat snacks and we try to make it a nutritional balance of water, protein, fruits and whatever other snacks we get donated and we put aside, especially for our homeless clients,” said Babin.

He explained that even though some of the homeless people use the Soup Kitchen to be able to access a warm meal, they have set schedules and sometimes they need a little snack in between. 

“Our homeless clients are allowed to come to use our services the five days a week that we’re open, whereas other clients, we limit it to three times a week because they can pick up fruits and vegetables and all the extras to fill two bags,” said Babin.

To be able to continue offering snacks for their homeless clients, Babin said they need donations of peanut butter, jelly or jam, bread, fruits, easy to open cans of non-perishable items, chips and other bagged snacks. 

Babin added that even though those types of donations are extremely important for the food bank, the place would not be able to run without volunteers and they need some help in that area as well. 

“We strongly rely on volunteers for everything that we do as without volunteers this place wouldn’t operate. We only have eight full-time staff, two-part time staff and 95 per cent of this place is volunteers,” said Babin.

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