The Managing Director of the Mustard Seed Kamloops says the organization has been seeing new people access their services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking on NL Newsday, Mario Borba says those are likely people from other B.C. communities who are coming into Kamloops.

“That may be because the might not have the same services that we serve here or maybe because of that family that was living paycheck to paycheck, now that the mom or dad got laid off, now they need to find a way to supplement that income that was reduced, and having food certainly helps with that food insecurity,” he said.

As the pandemic wears on, Borba says he is expecting to see these numbers to increase.

“We don’t see that stopping, so the challenge will be how can we serve that amount of people,” Borba said. “We are assuming that pretty soon we will have 30 or 40 more people that will need help through food security, and how can we provide that security for them.

“Those are conversations that we have been having with the city and we are looking to find solutions.”

He says he’s grateful for the support from the Kamloops community, which has helped serve clients during their time of need.

And he notes that a number of people are taking their meals to go because the Mustard Seed cannot allow more than 20 people into the dayroom at any given time because of COVID-19 restrictions.

The city of Kamloops has donated 2,500 containers to help alleviate some concerns about shortages in take-out containers.