This Saturday marks the annual Rotary Fall Food Drive for the Kamloops Food Bank.
Executive Director Bernadette Siracky asks people wishing to donate to fill up those yellow bags with non-perishables and put it at the end of your driveway by 9:00 Saturday morning to be picked up.
“And then just fill it. Fill it with any type of non-perishable product you have in your house. Everything from baby food, pet food and then of course soup, canned meat, pasta and pasta sauce, etc. And we’re asking people to put that as far to the street as possible to the edge of their property.”
Siracky says there are a couple of things people should be aware of including the fact that they do not need additional volunteers this time around. “So we are just going to be having our staff, our regular volunteers and Rotarians and that’s it. So my apologies to those who typically come here because you usually bring such positivity and enthusiasm to the event and we’re really missing that.”
Siracky says food bank use did go up when the pandemic first hit, but it dropped back down after CERB came into effect.
“What we’ve found is that many people who perhaps have used us for the first time or were in crisis mode, once they started receiving the CERB funding they were able to meet their basic need. So that initial spike calmed down and our numbers did not grow. As a matter of fact they fell a little bit after CERb for certain, but what we did notice was that we had new people coming who had never accessed our service before.”
“What we also experienced was the support from the provincial and federal government to support essential services. So a food bank was deemed an essential service and of course we are offering a basic need and we have been well supported through the supports of the government. And then the general public really started to see what was happening with themselves, with their neighbours, with family member that have never had to use us before and the generosity was immense. So I would like to be very grateful and thankful to our community who again understood that it could be them in our lineup in probably one of the most powerful ways they’ve ever understood it before.”
