Editor's note: This article was amended on July 20, 2024, with updated information on the donor.
Food insecurity may be on the rise, but people in Bradford are teaming up to help take a bite out of hunger.
With the help of the town’s transportation department, Bradford West Gwillimbury Fire and Emergency Services helped to donate about 2,800 kilograms of dried food, including rice, beans, chick peas and green peas to the Helping Hand Food Bank on Thursday afternoon, on behalf of the charity GlobalMedic out of Toronto.
Bradford staff and firefighters took a town truck and loader down to the city to pick up four pallets packed with food and brought it to the food bank in the early afternoon.
“It feels nice to be able to bring something to the community to help people that we know are hungry,” deputy fire chief Steve Hall said. “It’s disheartening when you go behind some of these places and you see people lining up outside and you realize just how good we have it compared to some other families.”
This is the second such donation local firefighters have been able to make in partnership with GlobalMedic, after Hall explained the group reached out last summer to offer some of the extra food they had available.
Early this spring, Hall reached out to say that if the opportunity came up again, the service would “absolutely jump on board,” and just last week the group offered another donation.
John Koning was one of the food bank volunteers who helped receive the donation, which he called “huge.”
“Every pound of food that we don’t have to buy is money that we don’t have to raise,” he said. “Especially when we’re receiving staples, like beans and rice, stuff that is healthy and really important to have around."
Having those satiating foods with a long shelf life is “really important,” and follows other donations from March and April, all of which come at an important time, as demand at the food bank continues to rise.
During the grand opening of the food bank’s new home, the town’s social services and community hub at 177 Church St., Claire Jones, vice-chair of the food bank’s board of directors, acknowledged that according to the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, the amount of households experiencing food insecurity in the region has increased to about 26 per cent in 2023, from about 18 per cent in 2022.
“Here in Bradford, it’s no different,” she said during the event. “In Bradford, demand has increased more than 300 per cent since 2020.”
In May, Jones said they had 1,115 client visits. While that may appear down from the 1,335 client visits in May 2023, Jones also explained that last year clients were able to visit twice per month.
Since April of this year, in response to increasing demands and expenses, the food bank switched to only permitting clients to visit once per month, but also transitioned to the new marketplace model to make it easier for clients to select the foods they need most.
The increased demand in Simcoe-Muskoka region follows the provincial trend, which according to Statistics Canada saw the number of households experiencing food insecurity in the province increase to about 24 per cent in 2023, from about 17 per cent in 2020.
Food bank executive director Carolyn Khan estimates they are currently serving about 400 families in Bradford, which range from singles and couples to families of six or more, and an average of 42 new families register each month.
“Each shift that we are open, we meet people who are new to the food bank who are registering with us for the very first time,” she said.
To accommodate that demand, Khan said they are looking for more funding to maintain what has become “an essential service” for many residents.
“At the same time, we need to be realistic that a bag or two of food is not going to solve the root problem of food insecurity — the root problem being poverty — and we need to advocate for better income solutions for people who are living in poverty so that food banks are no longer needed,” she said.
Community Food Centres Canada (CFCC) recently launched a new online tool providing statistical profiles of poverty and food insecurity by federal electoral ridings, based on data from Statistics Canada’s 2021 Census of Population, 2022 Canadian Income Survey reports and Maytree's Welfare in Canada 2022 report.
In York-Simcoe, which includes Bradford West Gwillimbury as well as Georgina, Georgina Island First Nation, East Gwillimbury and King Township, the profile shows a population of 122,815 in which seven per cent live in poverty and 12 per cent live in unsuitable, inadequate, or unaffordable housing.
Aside from income levels, the profile shows a correlation with poverty and family type:
- Singles living with roommates make up just three per cent of the population, but 33 per cent are experiencing poverty
- Singles living alone make up six per cent of the population with 18 per cent experiencing poverty
- Single parents make up 11 per cent of the population with 14 per cent experiencing poverty
- Couples without children make up 17 per cent of the population with four per cent experiencing poverty
- Couples with children make up 61 per cent of the population with four per cent experiencing poverty
To address the issues of poverty and food insecurity, CFCC recommends reforms from the federal government, including that they:
- Commit to reducing food insecurity by 50 per cent by 2030, relative to 2021 levels
- Invest in robust income and social policies to address poverty
- Ensure those policies focus on the specific needs of different population groups
- Strengthen the social safety net, including Employment Insurance, and affordable housing
More information about the food bank and how it has been supporting the community since 1991 can be found at bradfordfoodbank.ca.
