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Whether your holiday season included a Christmas tree or candles for Chanukah or Kwanzaa, this is a time for giving and for receiving. Many families gathered, frequently around the dinner table, to share good food and good conversation. But not all.
Hunger is now part of our landscape, and the term ‘food bank’ has become so entrenched in our vocabulary that we forget this ‘banking’ system is fairly young. Canada’s financial institutions have been around for well over 100 years. Food banks date back to the early 1980s. But since then, they, along with other similar organizations have evolved into professional, efficient operations.
As traditional banking has changed, so too have these ‘banks’ whose currency is food. Just as ATMs and online banking provide better access to money, the organizations that help feed Ontario’s hungry have developed more sophisticated methods of distributing food to the people and agencies who need it, and they’ve cultivated stronger links with corporate partners.
Consider the story of Second Harvest. Founded by two Toronto women in 1985, Second Harvest began, as legend has it, with nothing more than a hatchback and a vision that no one need ever go hungry. Today, the organization has seven refrigerated trucks that are dispatched daily to collect high quality, perishable foods from across Toronto.
Within hours of a pick up, the fruits, vegetables, milk, frozen foods and meats – which would otherwise have gone to waste – are delivered to community and drop-in centres, shelters and breakfast programs. From that little hatchback, Second Harvest has grown dramatically and now provides fresh and frozen food for approximately 13,000 meals daily. Their donor list reads like a who’s who in the food industry: McCain, Kellogg Canada, Ace Bakery, Pusateri and Starbucks, to name but a few.
They’ve also nurtured stronger, multi-layered partnerships with corporate sponsors. A few years ago, Canadian Tire bought a truck for Second Harvest. Then, when the truck drivers needed coats, Canadian Tire arranged for Marks Work Wearhouse to supply jackets.
For many years, Second Harvest was reticent about planning. Not any more. Like every modern business, they’ve got a strategic plan. Zoe Cormack Jones, Executive Director, explains, “We used to feel we were a band-aid solution. Planning was, in a sense, almost admitting defeat. However, we realized that there will always be surplus food and people who need it.”
Strategic planning also figures prominently for the Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB), whose main mission is to acquire and distribute food to member food banks across the province. Peppered with phrases like “due diligence”, “accountability” and “media contact databases”, their strategic plan has five goals. They include improving food distribution and strengthening financial sustainability and accountability.
OAFB has a roadmap of how to make their plan a reality…and they have the necessary infrastructure. You’d be amazed by the size and scope of OAFB warehouse operations in Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo. Buildings between 30,000 and 100,000 square feet house walk-in freezers and refrigerators, tractor trailers, pallet movers and racking. OAFB works closely with its partners to ship 1.1 million pounds of food annually across Ontario.
The Ontario Trillium Foundation recently provided a grant to enable OAFB meet its goal of developing a provincial food distribution network to improve service, lower costs, increase distribution capacity and improve food safety.
OAFB hopes to evolve from a relatively informal partnership to a coordinated network with an integrated system of distribution and a high level of cooperation. In the meantime, they’re developing a computer tracking system of food donations and have already seen an increase in the amount of food offers from corporate donors.
OAFB member, Daily Bread Food Bank, has in the past ten years, taken itself from operating out of an old warehouse (graciously offered rent free from Loblaws) to having their own $4.5 million facility, complete with an industrial kitchen. The kitchen is staffed with three permanent cooks and ten trainees, who, over 20 weeks blocks, learn food preparation and are then placed in permanent jobs. Staff mass produce meals and absolutely no food is wasted: perishables not consumed immediately are used in frozen casseroles, soups or other dishes.
The fact that hunger exists is not good news. But here’s what is: the organizations dedicated to eradicating hunger continue to fine tune their strategy to overcome the problem. From humble and often ad hoc roots, they have transformed into modern and responsive organizations. As such, thanks to the relationships cultivated with corporate donors, the food bank can buy more food with your dollar than you can. Regardless of how you choose to contribute to the fight against hunger – through donations of cash, food or time – you can be confident your gift is being used wisely and well.
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