Image Credit: CFJC Today / Kent Simmonds

By Jill Sperling

Food Security

Kamloops organizations work to keep community fed during pandemic

Aug 20, 2020 | 4:40 PM

KAMLOOPS — Volunteers at the Mount Paul Community Food Centre operate like a well-oiled machine as they prepare food for their next round of takeaway meals.

“To date we’re actually at 24,971 meals,” said Manager Dawn Christie. “So with our meal service today (Aug. 20), we’ll reach over 25,000 meals since the end of March.”

The ‘Terrific Takeaway’ meals began as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. People can pick up a freshly cooked meal in the parking lot of the food centre. In July, the centre moved from a five-days-a-week schedule to three, but continues to provide daily meal deliveries.

“We’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback for the meal service. A lot of people are just really happy to come and connect with a familiar face and to have a healthy meal option,” Christie said.

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The centre has started up a number of other programs to ensure people have food during the pandemic.

“We also do grocery shopping assistance for seniors, so three days a week we have volunteers go out and do grocery shopping for seniors and then deliver it to their home,” Christie said. “We have a kids meal kit which happens once a month where families register and get groceries and a healthy recipe that they then take home and make at their own house, and we also have a seniors hamper program.”

The Kamloops Food Bank provides much of the food used in the Takeaway Meals. At the beginning of the pandemic, the food bank faced some challenges of its own.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, we did see an increase of people accessing our service,” said Warehouse Operations Manager Wes Graham, “but we saw a reduction in donations coming in. We have a food recovery program at the stores and at the beginning people were out there buying more groceries so we were recovering less. People were uncertain what was going to happen, so we were also seeing fewer donations.”

The volume of donations has increased since then and, due to the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), the number of clients has decreased.

While the shelves are currently well-stocked, the needs of the community are likely to change.

“We’ve been lucky, but we’re also planning for an increase when CERB and other funding ends, and we want to be very cautious, because we’re expecting a fairly large increase of people needing our service,” Graham said.

The Food Bank is preparing for that day and it’s hoped the fall food drive next month will provide the necessary stock to get through any hard times ahead.