By Elizabeth Kirkpatrick
The Centretown Emergency Food Centre is initiating its first-ever “business food drive” in a desperate attempt to spark more donations during the holiday season.
“We’re hoping this fundraiser will raise enough to get us through the bleak winter months,” says Kerry Kaiser, co-ordinator of the Centretown Emergency Food Centre.
City-wide charitable donations have dwindled over the past several months, forcing area food banks to start asking neighbouring businesses for help.
City councillor Elisabeth Arnold says the idea is promising.
“The business community is very generous here,” she says. “Sometimes you just need to ask.”
The food centre has turned to local businesses for help because for the first time in eight years, it is struggling to stay afloat.
“Small business, to be frank, makes money off the residents who live nearby, so they should support the community they are in,” says Kaiser. “It’s always important to extend a hand.”
Each month, thousands of dollars have been spent on supplies with only a few hundred dollars coming in from the City of Ottawa.
“This is quickly depleting our resources,” says Kaiser.
The food centre receives one third of its approximately $100,000 budget from the City of Ottawa, with the rest coming from church groups and private donations.
But this money is not enough, and the Food Centre now has too little food lining its shelves.
So the food centre is striving to make its donation bins more visible to holiday shoppers this season.
At least 10 Centretown businesses will be asked to place food bank donation boxes in their storefronts.
The food centre hasn’t yet decided which businesses it will ask to house its donations.
But Kaiser says she hopes local business will take cues from stores like Herb and Spice, who consistantly donate to the Food Centre .
The boxes will be brightly decorated in bright festive wrapping paper in an effort to attract distracted customers.
Making it accessible for holiday shoppers to donate is the Food Centre’s main strategy. And Kaiser says she hopes both shoppers and shopkeepers will think about the less fortunate this holiday season.
“I think the community should always know what’s going on in its backyard,” she says.
But Barbara McInnes, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Ottawa, says filling the gap between the growing need for food and the decreasing level of donations is going to be a challenge.
“I don’t think there are simple answers, except continuing to call on the few people who still have the means to help,” she says.
A major challenge for the centre has been landing enough food donations to last through the winter months, according to Kaiser.
By last October, the Food Centre had already spent over 80 per cent of its budget on purchasing food.
“As we approach our busiest time of year, we are probably going to see that total go at least $10,000 over budget by the end of the year,” she says.
Kaiser says another important purpose of this drive is to awaken the community to the increases number of people who sleep on the streets.
She adds that the Centre hasn’t done enough to build its profile within the community.
“Some businesses and people simply do not know who we are,” she says.
The bottom line, according to McInnes, is that there are no simple solutions to the donation drought across the province.
Until a solution is found, social services like food banks will have to cut back services while asking neighbours for help.