Helping Hands food bank of Steinbach, Man., with the support of the community, can keep providing food to those in need.
Helping Hands had received 40,000 pounds of non-perishables donated during the fall charity donation.
Throughout the year, Helping Hands often has multiple donation drives, but because of COVID 19, some of the fundraisers didn’t happen, and they expected to get very little donated this year.
“It was just unbelievable it was almost a godsend. We had 40,000 pounds of non-perishables donated,” said Hank Klassen, board chairman of Helping Hands who has been with the food bank since the very beginning.
“I’m extremely grateful that we are getting donations,” said Louise Broesky, operations manager of Helping Hands.
Helping Hands has about 1,500 people receiving food this year, less than previous years.
As with the government money that people are getting, people don’t seem to need to access the food that the food bank gives out.
“We couldn’t believe it,” said Klassen of the decline in demand for hampers.
“I can’t predict the future, no idea how long it will last,” said Broesky, of the trend.
Despite having the most donations ever both from people of the community and local businesses, there has been a decrease of 80 per cent of volunteers for the food bank.
Before COVID, about 30 people were volunteering at a time. That number has dropped down to only 14 volunteers at a time.
Dividers have been set up to ensure the safety of both volunteers and those getting food.
“I have a problem with cars idling by, waiting to pick up free food. I don’t need any, but what are the requirements to get free food?” said Tim Hamm on the Google question page.
Some people have to get rides from people that they know to the food bank, and it could be for many different reasons like the car is in the shop or that they don’t have a vehicle available for them.
The requirements to get free food is pretty simple and it does not take long to register for a hamper.
Some of the information that is required is how many people are in the household so they can plan out how much food to give to each family, what your state of income is and if you are renting or owning a house.
Emergency hampers to those in need “and, we don’t ask any questions,” said Klassen.
