Blog post by Barb McPhee
Barb is a member of many community-led initiatives, including the Poverty Task Force, Community Voices, Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, and the Food Access Working Group/Community Food Drive Committee

1 in 5 families in Guelph and Wellington County with incomes below $40,000 is food insecure.  That is a pretty alarming number of people that are going hungry in our city.

Poverty is everywhere but if often invisible. Living below the poverty line does not just include Ontario Works, Ontario Disability Support Program recipients, or the homeless. Poverty affects a wide variety of people such as seniors, minimum wage earners as well as households with just one person working.  Although people are working, they are earning wages way below the poverty line and are struggling to feed themselves and their families.

That coffee that you purchased from Tim Horton’s this morning was served to you by a minimum wage worker and the cup that the coffee came in was made by a factory worker – working maybe just a bit above minimum wage with minimum benefits and no job security.

The Guelph Food Bank lends some support to a lot of these families, but when those families cannot be assisted or what they get is not enough to keep them fed for the current month, that is when the smaller food pantries in the city step in to help.

These emergency food pantries are located in neighbourhood groups, churches and community centres all around the city. They come together at the  Food Access Working Group (a working group of the Guelph and Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination) to find ways to fill in the gaps to keep people in our city from going hungry.  This group of dedicated volunteers and agency partners struggle as well to keep their pantries full – due to the overwhelming requests from their communities. So in order to address this growing need, they will be once again running The Guelph Community Food Drive. This drive is to help fill the pantries for the summer and the target this year is to collect 15,000 lbs of food.

From May 31st to June 7th, food bins will be placed at 5 donation spots around the city.  These will be Lakeside Hope House, Salvation Army, Three Willows Church, Guelph City Hall and the GNSC Portable behind the small parking lot at Waverley Drive School.

So how can you help other than make donations at the listed drop off spots? You can make monetary and gift card donations.  You can start a food drive where you work, in your school, church, neighbourhood or in your own families.  There are also many volunteer opportunities such as dropping off flyers and picking up and sorting the food donated.

Although you may have just donated to the Guelph Food Bank Drive, I would like to urge you to dig just a little deeper to support the community food drive for the smaller emergency food pantries as well. These local pantries are often the only walkable and accessible place for people to get the food they need.  Your donation will feed families and feed your heart.

Watch for the bins and posters and if you would like to help out  in way, or just want some more information about the emergency food pantries or how to set up your own food drive, please contact: Karen Kamphuis at 519-265- 4299  or email [email protected] and she will steer you in the right direction to find what you need.

Let’s all work together to make sure no neighbourhood goes hungry.