Tag Archive: clients

  1. Fighting Poverty Together

    Comments Off on Fighting Poverty Together

    Often when we think of poverty, we don’t think about how deep the problem is in our very own backyard.

    In North York, poverty hides in high rise apartments, rooming houses and shelters. Often food is the last priority on a long list of bills that must be paid by our neighbours who are struggling to make ends meet each month.

    All too often, we hear stories like Holly’s.

    “I always thought I could do it on my own. I was able to pay my rent, phone, and medications with the little money I had. Food was always last on my list. Being a type 1 diabetic that takes insulin every day, eating properly is very important. I soon realized that I could not do everything on my own.

    I found the food bank and soon found out I was receiving more than help with my food.  I found a sense of community”.

    Because of skyrocketing housing prices, unsteady employment and social assistance rates that have failed to keep up with the cost of the living in our city – thousands of our neighbours are struggling to get by each day. Together we can change that.

    Your support provides more than food. It provides social inclusion through programs like Community Kitchens, employment readiness training like our Leadership in Logistics program and ensures we can continue to invest in long term solutions to end hunger and poverty. We know that food banks alone aren’t the answer. With your help, we can make sure providing essential emergency food support is just the start of the relationship we build with those that need us most.

    Please make the most generous gift you can today and help make a lasting difference in the lives of our neighbours. I know that together we can make so much more possible in North Toronto.

  2. More Than a Food Bank

    Comments Off on More Than a Food Bank

    Each year we are blown away by the support from our community!  Without you we wouldn’t be able to make a difference for more than 15,000 people that struggle to put food on the table each month.

    View as PDF

  3. An Update on YOUR Impact!

    Comments Off on An Update on YOUR Impact!

    Each and every year you WOW us with your incredible support to help those in the community who otherwise may go without something to eat.  

    This year was no different and again you went above and beyond in making a difference in the lives of people that use your local food banks.

    Enjoy the Sept-Dec 2016 Review!

     

    fy17midyear

    For a PDF Version Click Here

    Subscribe to Our Enewsletter

    * indicates required




  4. Planning for the Holidays

    Comments Off on Planning for the Holidays

    It’s that crazy time of year! The cold weather and December brings a busy time for us all and if you’re anything like me, you’ve got some holiday plans on your schedule too.  I’m tired just thinking about all that’s going on before we kick off the new year.

    What do the holidays mean to you?  Is it about family and celebration?  Or maybe a time to reflect on your past year and what is to come?  The holidays can be different for every person.

    But, the holidays can be harder for some people than others.  Sometimes they can be much harder than they were just the year before.

    Meet Penny.

    Penny has two daughters aged 7 and 11.  As a single mom, she works full time while her daughters go to school and take dance classes.

    Everything was going well until the unexpected happened.

    All of a sudden, Penny was also needed to be caregiver to her two elderly and sick grandparents.  She had not planned for this kind of bump in the road.

    We’ve all had those times where something unexpected has happened.  Luckily for some people there is financial support or family to fall back on during those times.  Others, like Penny find themselves trapped.

    “I didn’t know what to do.  I’ve always been a planner but I didn’t know how I was going to plan my way through this,” Penny says of the experience, “All of a sudden I had to take care of the whole family – not just myself and the girls.”

    With her family depending on her, she knew that she needed outside help.  She wouldn’t have time or money to take care of everything – especially during this time of year.

    That’s when Penny ended up at the food bank.

    Between the hamper that she receives every other week from her local food bank, store sales and coupon clipping; Penny has found a way to ensure that everyone in her family is able to eat nutritious meals each day.
    smiling-woman-1340662

    “If not for the food bank, there’s no way I would be able to feed my family and give my kids the holiday celebration that they deserve.” Penny says, “The holidays are much harder than usual but I’m glad to know that I can get help – anyone can.”

    Penny has been saving up bit by bit to be able to give her kids gifts and a nice dinner.

    “I want them to have what other kids have, they shouldn’t be left out of a holiday.  Thanks to the help we are getting from the food bank – they don’t have to be.”

    Because of your support during the Winter Food Drive – Penny will be able to serve a healthy holiday meal to her whole family and that is something to celebrate!

    Hunger doesn’t hibernate and we can make a difference for families just like Penny’s!

    badge

    Let’s work together for a hunger free holiday!  Help us raise $250,000 and 250,000 lbs. of food for the Winter Food Drive. 

    No one should go without enough food to eat.





  5. Changing Lives Through Food

    Comments Off on Changing Lives Through Food

    Sometimes we don’t realize how much our actions make a difference to people we’ve never even met. But I want to take the time to share with you how your actions of supporting your local food bank have changed lives and come full circle.

    Mr. and Mrs. Perez moved here with their family over a year ago fleeing a very difficult situation back home.  When they arrived, they found themselves needing to go to the food bank to help them get back on their feet.  

    Not long ago I had a chat with them as they were spending time volunteering with us.  They told me that the reason they now volunteer in the food bank is because they want to pay it forward.

    “I want others to know that someone out there cares for them.  Coming from the situation in our past – it can be hard to understand that there are people who actually care.”

    When the Perez family came to Canada, they struggled to find jobs because they didn’t speak English – which in turn meant they struggled to put food on the table for their children.  “It wasn’t until we came to the food bank that we realized people really cared, from volunteers, to staff and donors – everyone wants to make sure that no one goes hungry.  In a country like Canada, no one should have to.” Mr. Perez told me.

    Unfortunately, the number of food bank users in our city keeps growing.  According to the latest Who’s Hungry report, there were over 900,000 visits to Toronto food banks last year. That is a 48% increase in the suburbs since 2008. 

    Mrs. Perez told me that on their first visit to the food bank she was surprised at the kind of options they had, “I was able to find ingredients to make recipes that I used to make for my family back home.  It really helped my children as a lot of this new Canadian food was strange to them”.  Personally when I see the kind of donations that come into the food bank, I am also surprised by the vast variety and selection that sometimes gets donated.  I think it is great that just because a person needs to use the food bank they still are able to have a choice as to what goes into their food hamper, just as they would if going to a grocery store. It’s also important that we have choice to accommodate dietary restrictions and allergies.

    It’s great know that Perez family have adjusted to Canada and glad to be a part of our community. It can be really hard picking up and changing your life. There are many worries that one can have in a situation like that – whether or not you’ll be able to have a meal shouldn’t have to be one of them.

    These days Mr. Perez works at a full time job and speaks English very well.  His kids go off to school each day having had a healthy breakfast and he just wants the same for people that are now where he was. Each week the Perez family go to the food bank they used to use but now they do to stock shelves and help others pick out groceries to feed their own families.

    Mr. Perez loves giving back to his local food bank, “I am very grateful that I can give back to people that are just like I once was; worrying about whether their children are going to have something to eat that day or not. If not for the food bank, I might still be worrying.”

    More than 16,000 people will use a food bank in your community this month. Because of you they will be able to leave knowing that their kids (and themselves) will not have to go without a nutritious meal to help them get back on their feet.

    Please consider making a generous donation or volunteering to help our new neighbours get back on their feet.

     






  6. Because of YOU!

    Comments Off on Because of YOU!

    This year because of you amazing things happened!  You made a huge impact in the lives of people in your community that didn’t have enough food to eat!  Your donations, food drives, volunteering and support provided an incredible amount of food to people in Toronto!  Thank you!

    donor impact fy16

    Cheers to another amazing year and onto the next!

    View in PDF

     





  7. Sorting Through It All

    Comments Off on Sorting Through It All

    With your support, we serve over 15,000 people that are hungry each month!  As you can imagine, it takes A LOT of food to be able to provide meals for our neighbours in need.

    Through generous donations of individual and corporate donors, we receive 100,000’s of pounds of food.  But all of this food isn’t ready to go out to the food banks – it must be sorted for quality first.

    IMG_8432

    I caught up with Kadian Clarke, a staff member at North York Harvest – she works with groups of volunteers to sort through thousands of pounds of food.  Since January, she’s trained and sorted with over 1,000 people including employee groups, schools, sports teams as well as families.

    “My favourite part of the job is teaching people about the foods in the food bank as well as building awareness of hunger in our city.”

    It turns out in order to sort all of this food; there are many rules.  The reason for this is so we can provide the best possible food to people in your community.  That means we can’t accept damaged, unlabeled, expired or half-eaten foods (yes, all of these items come into the warehouse on a regular basis and must be sorted before they reach the food bank).

    “There are 23 categories of food that go out to agencies.” Kadian tells me as she sets up the sort room for her next group.   These categories include baby food, rice, nutritional supplements, snacks and proteins – others in higher demand than others. “The important part of sorting them into these categories is that we can better serve the clients with food they need. This way agencies don’t get a box of random items ranging from tuna to pudding cups when what they really needed was canned beans.”

    We are extremely thankful for all of the donations that we receive, but some of them can be completely strange.  I asked some of the staff what items they’ve seen through the years that made them raise an eyebrow.

    We definitely see the wacky and the weird in our bins on a regular basis for example:

    • Graham crackers from a company that went out of business years ago
    • Vegetable soup that expired in 1995
    • Lawn fertilizer
    • Firewood
    • Caviar that was 10 years past the best before date
    • Rotting eggs
    • Cut off shorts
    • Expired military rations
    • Hazmat suits

    Thankfully, most donations received are exactly what our clients are looking for in a food hamper: items like canned fish, canned tomatoes, beans, rice and baby food.  It’s important that we take the time to sort and categorize these items. Unfortunately sorting through unwanted items is a lot of extra work.  And it takes valuable time and money to dispose of anything that is damaged or expired.

    Volunteers come in to sort with their coworkers or friends and end the session knowing more about hunger in the city and why their help is so essential. The thing that Kadian sees volunteers take away from the food sorting experience is a sense of accomplishment within the community.  “After each sort session, we share how many pounds of food were sorted and how many families they are helping.  This way the volunteers get to see their hard work pay off first hand.  The groups feel great about being able to make a difference.”  And make a difference they do.

     

     

     

     




  8. Connecting Through Food

    Comments Off on Connecting Through Food

    Shirah Stern

    Guest blog by Shirah Stern, Development Associate Corporate Giving

    Did you know that there are free toy lending libraries in North York?  Or literacy programs to prepare children for school? I sure didn’t before I went to visit Weston Area Emergency Services (WAES).  WAES is a food bank that falls under the NYH umbrella offering emergency food hampers to people in need.  It was there I met volunteer Marlene Jones.  And she sure taught me a lot about community services I didn’t even know existed!

    mjonesMarlene has been volunteering with WAES for almost a year now.  After retiring, Marlene wanted to give back because she personally felt grateful for the education and career that she has had in her life.  Her passion for health and nutrition naturally led her to a volunteer program that helps people in her neighbourhood access the food they need.  “Having access to good food is so important for family health,” she told me. “It’s also important that members of our communities are aware of programs to support people regardless of their personal income or background. Especially if they have kids.”

    With four young children, I often wonder why kids don’t come with a manual.  We all want to be the best parent that we can and these free resources are a huge helping hand for many that don’t have a ready support network.

    As a retired public health nurse, Marlene informs clients of nearby programs that they didn’t know they had access to.  These range from parenting programs and educational tutoring to newcomer workshops and recreational activities.  And these are available for anyone in the city. Because Marlene shares her knowledge, these families know where they can go to make their lives just a little bit easier.

    ymMRWOoiEbuPNzpNAt0-Wur2DQHhYoQVnm4_mVVQGsM
    Marlene shared the joy she feels being able to assistant clients with their food needs and help them get other supports they need.  Young, single mothers come to the food bank to put food in their bellies, and walk out with information about summer camp their children can attend.  A man struggling with being laid off from work will come in to get extra items for dinner and leave with the number of a service to help him update his resume.  There are so many other examples of people in your neighbourhood that benefit from these programs.

    Referral services and connections are part of what makes food banks so important to our community.  I have worked at NYH for many years and I didn’t even know that some of these programs were available (toy lending library??!!).  And working in the social service sector, if I wasn’t aware, I can imagine many other families in our city that could really use these services aren’t aware of them either.  Sharing is caring.

    I really admire the generosity and thoughtfulness of Marlene and other volunteers at WAES – they truly demonstrate the value of volunteering and helping others in the community. “It takes a village to raise a child,” share Marlene.  And she enjoys being a part of it.

    Families in our city are accessing programs that are helpful because of connections made in the food bank.  It is because of you that we are able to make connections like this happen. Thank you for being part of our village.

    Each day many volunteers put their time and heart into making a difference in the community through volunteering.  If you are interested in volunteering with us please contact us – we’d love to have you join the team!

     

     

    volhand

    Want to know more about free programs offered in the city?  Call Toronto Health Connections at 416-338-7600 or 211 to access community resources for anyone.