TITLE: North York Harvest Food Bank Fall Food Drive Public Sort
MEDIA PHOTO OPPORTUNITY: Public Volunteer Sort
DATE: Oct 9th TIME: 10am-12pm, 1pm-3pm LOCATION: North York Harvest warehouse, 116 Industry Street, Toronto, ON M6M 4L8
Main Messages:
Leave Hunger Behind
#joyoffood
$1=3 meals
Media Contact:
Michelle Vinokurov, Director of Development & Marketing
Office: 416-635-7771 ext.26 Cell phone: 416-738-4886 michelle@northyorkharvest.com
Are you looking to make a difference in your local community? We might have a great opportunity for you.
Right now we’re looking for volunteers to assist us as Food Drive Ambassadors and as Drivers’ Assistants during our Fall Food Drive on the following days:
Saturday, October 3rd
Sunday, October 4th
Saturday,October 10th
Sunday,October 11th
If you are interested and would like to know more about the roles, please email lisa@northyorkharvest.com.
“How can I make a difference in my community?” It’s a question we hear a lot at North York Harvest, and one that’s hard to give a concrete answer for. Every day we meet new amazing people who are taking new and creative approaches to helping their neighbours in need. Everyone’s different and the way they better their community is a reflection of that.
But while it’s hard to come up with a formula for creating positive change, we usually encourage people to do 3 things.
Choose your passion. Is it fresh food? Is it kids eating healthy meals?
Plan a fun and creative event based around the things you love to do.
Invite your friends, family and co-workers to join you.
Easier said than done right? Well, this last week, one of our incredible donors, Brand Active, followed these steps perfectly, and the result was inspiring, impactful, a really fun.
With the summer winding down, you’ve probably started to notice parents heading to the store to set their kids up with back-to-school supplies. Pencils, notebooks, calculators and backpacks are all important to a child’s academic success and self-esteem, but they can also be expensive, especially for your neighbours already on a tight budget. Any major expenses can be hard on a family, and when finances get strained the tough solution for many parents is to skip meals to make up the difference.
Long-time North York Harvest partner Brand Active had noticed the financial strain of back to school shopping, and decided that they wanted to help. They reached out to North York Harvest and before you knew it, a plan was in place.
Yesterday 22 Brand Active employees came to the NYH warehouse with 500 brand new back packs. Working as a team, the employees spent the morning carefully filling each back pack with school supplies that the Toronto District School Board had identified to them as the most crucial to a student’s success. After a few hours, the bags were packed and ready to be distributed to children throughout the community. Mission accomplished, right? Wrong. Brand active was just getting started.
The bags were packed in to cars and sent to one of our member agencies, the Room to Grow Community Food Bank in Toronto’s west end. The Brand Active team joined the volunteers there to set up Room to Grow’s first ever Back to School Community BBQ. Throughout the afternoon Brand Active volunteers grilled burgers, hosted games, and painted faces. At the end of the event over 400 families got brand new back packed filled with school supplies for their kids.
“We’ve partnered with NYH for several years and support them throughout the year. But we wanted to do more than just write a cheque. We wanted to engage all our employees and give back to our community. This was something special that went over and above the other ways we work with them. It’s not food. We realize that’s a bit odd given we are working with a food bank,” said Robynne Budish, Brand Active’s Principle Partner. “But for every backpack we hand out we are saving families anywhere from $50 -$60 that they would have to spend on schools supplies. That’s a lot of food they can buy instead.”
Comments Off on Sending Kids To School Hungry Puts Them At Risk
When was the last time you got hangry? It might be funny word, but it’s a very real feeling and we’ve all been there. If you’re like me, when you get really hungry, everything else, whether its work, studying or friends, shifts to the back-burner and you turn into an irritable, unfocused and checked out person. Sounds awful right? Well, the good news for you and me, is that this probably doesn’t happen all that often. We usually have access to lots of healthy, filling foods that keep our energy up and moods happy throughout the day. But what if this wasn’t just an occasional feeling and your hunger interfered with your happiness and productivity on a daily basis?
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that a child needs a good breakfast and lunch each day to stay engaged and focused in school. Studies have shown that students who go to school hungry lack effort and motivation in the classroom, have trouble interacting with their teachers and classmates, and often have poor academic performance. But what if I told you that every day in Canada, nearly 1 in 7 children will go to school hungry? It’s a startling statistic that has short term and long term implications for children in our communities.
Not only is hunger robbing our children of a great learning and social experience, but it’s also hurting their chances of becoming engaged and productive community members, and seriously jeopardizing their future economic stability.
We know that when kids eat a full, healthy breakfast they usually have better attendance, are more attentive in the classroom, and have fewer disciplinary problems. So why are so many children going without?
Unfortunately, for many parents in our community struggling with poverty, going without food is often the solution to making ends meet. In a recent poll, 54% of North York Harvest clients said that they regularly skip meals in order to pay for things like rent, utilities, healthcare and transportation. Putting food on the family table might seem essential, but when you stack it against these other things, you can see how a good breakfast or a healthy lunch often doesn’t make it into the family budget.
That’s why we need you to ensure that next month every child is starting the day with a good breakfast, and is heading to school with a healthy packed lunch.
Your donation will not only provide good food for healthy meals, but will also help to build a community with more academically successful and actively engaged young citizens.
Let’s send our children back to school with the food that they need to thrive!
Comments Off on 5 Things You May Not Know About Best Before Dates
Did you know that every year, the average single-family household in Toronto throws out around 275 kilos of food? That means that across the city about 1 in 4 purchases end up in the garbage.
One reason might be that you are throwing out food that has passed its “best before date”. But passed a best before date does not mean best to throw away.
5 facts that might make you think twice the next time you’re cleaning out your fridge
1) Best before dates and expiration dates are two very different things.
A product’s expiration date indicates the last day that product can be safely consumed. The best before date tells the consumer the time period that the food is optimally fresh. It has nothing to do with the product’s safety.
2) Non-perishable foods will display a best before date and not an expiration date.
In fact foods like crackers or cereal aren’t required to put any date on their packaging, but often do voluntarily. After that date has passed they may become slightly stale, but won’t do you any harm.
3) Perishable foods can often be consumed after the best before date.
The food might begin to lose some of its flavour and nutritional value but that does not mean that the product is in any way unsafe.
For example, an egg that is passed its best before date might be harder to poach as the yolk is more susceptible to breaking. But the egg is still fine and when scrambled up would taste as good as ever.
4) When in doubt, throw it out.
A lot of food is safe and edible after the best before date, but it’s important to check your food before you consume or donate it. If your food has changed colour or appearance, or has developed a bad smell, then it should be thrown out regardless of the expiration or best before date.
Foods that contain pathogens such as dairy, chicken or ground beef should not be eaten after their bet before date.
5) North York Harvest will accept donations that are passed their best before dates but NOT EXPIRED food.
We accept and distribute food donations that are up to 3 months passed their best before dates with the exception of baby food. Before you donate please make sure that none of your donated food has expired, and that the packaging has not been opened or damaged.
So next time you’re cleaning out the cupboards, think twice about what you’re tossing or donating. Your food donations make a big difference to family in need but always think of donating food that you would eat yourself.
For more information on how to donate food to North York Harvest or to find out more about why we raise funds to purchase food click here.
During the fall more and more of your food donations start to come through the door, and while that’s fantastic news for many of our community members, it creates the need for more volunteers in our warehouse. One group of volunteers that we rely heavily on during the fall and winter are our group food sorters. Every day thousands of pounds of food that you have raised through your food and fund drives, come into our warehouse and we need to make sure that this food is checked for expiry dates and damages and then sorted into the appropriate categories so that it can be sent out to agencies as quickly as possible.
Last year we had over 2000 volunteer food sorters come through our warehouse sorting an incredible 300,000 pounds of your food donations. That’s 30,000 hampers of healthy food for our neighbours in need.
Families, co-workers, classrooms, church groups, Girl Guide troops, and hockey teams all ran food and fund drives and then came though our doors looking for a great bonding experience that would make a difference to their community. All of them left at the end of the day with smiles of their faces knowing they had done a great thing for their neighbours in need.
Now the time has arrived for a new season of group food sorting and we need your help!
If you’re interested in group food sorting there are a few different ways to get involved:
1) If you are a 360 Partner or a Corporate Sponsor of North York Harvest you can register your team for food sorting RIGHT NOW! Please email fawad@northyorkharvest.com, and he’ll make sure your team has everything they need to get going.**
2) General Registration opens on September 1st. Please email fawad@northyorkharvest.com for more information about how to register your group.
Federal election season is just around the corner, and with the spotlight shining brighter on the many social, economic and environmental issues impacting Canadians, I’m finding myself filled with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I know that objectively speaking, I live in amazing country; one that encourages its citizens to share their voices, and offers many social services to enhance their quality of life. But just as there’s so much to be proud of in Canada, there are also many reasons to be critical.
For example, this month alone, over 840,000 of your fellow Canadians, 37% of which are children, will go to their local food bank looking for their next meal. That number has grown steadily since the recession of 2009 and with little national policy in place to combat food insecurity, there’s no reason to believe that things will turn around soon.
Simply put, in a country as developed and prosperous as Canada, no one should have to worry about where their next meal will come from.
Because of your donations, food banks like North York Harvest are able to make sure that Canadians in need can put good, healthy meals on the table. But that doesn’t mean that the issue has been resolved.
On October 19th 2015, we will go to the polls to decide who makes the big decisions in our country moving forward. With food bank usage across the country at all-time high levels, now is the time to let politicians know that food security is important to you and to millions of other Canadians, and that improvements to the current policy need to be made.
Here are a few simple actions that you can take to make sure that issues surrounding hunger and food banks are not forgotten this election season.
1) Contact the Member of Parliament candidates in your riding and let them know that food security in Canada is important to you and your neighbours. Call their office, write them a letter, email, or even tweet at them. It’s going to be their job to represent the views of their constituents; so make sure that they know that you’re passionate about this issue.
2) Attend local debates and try to get the issue of hunger in Canada on the agenda. This is great way to ensure that the topic becomes part of the discussion during the campaign and that strategies are being put forth by candidates.
3) On October 19th, head to the polls and vote for the candidate or party that represents your hope for a Canada without hunger!
If you’re not sure what party best aligns with your beliefs, you might want to take this on-line quiz.
This election season let’s make our communities without a enough food a priority. Let us know what you’re doing to spread the word by tweeting at us today with hash-tag #votefood4all.
