By Jim Donnelly
Marsha has run out of money. The 34-year-old single mother of two is on social assistance and short of cash. She’s got nowhere else to go and has to feed her 11- and 16-year-old sons. She says she’s here, at Parkdale Food Centre, for her kids.
“The people that come here are basically people with children,” Marsha (not her real name) sighs, raising her head. It’s the only visit to the west-end centre her family is allowed this month. “It’s rough sometimes and you just need help. I don’t like coming here but unfortunately you have to sometimes. My kids have to eat.”
Kids like Marsha’s are only two of thousands of local children under 18 forced to use food banks either directly or through their parents, a demographic the Ottawa Food Bank says has, like the rest of the general population, seen an increase of nearly five per cent in the past year.
The city’s foremost supplier of emergency food says of the approximately 34,000 people it assisted in 2001 almost half were below voting age. That’s about 14,000 kids, and another seven per cent of those recipients were under three years old.
Executive director Peter Tilley says the problem is getting worse.
“We’ve seen a disturbing jump in the statistics in the past year,” he says. “For the past three years we’ve seen no change in hunger count levels, but this year they went up.”
Tilley links the problem to poverty, blaming exorbitant rents and the sluggish economy.
“You keep hearing about layoffs, about high rents,” he says. “It all trickles down. And even though some parents go without to feed their kids, a lot of kids are still affected.”
Youth who don’t eat enough nutritious foods get tired faster, have shorter attention spans and encounter more difficulty at school, says dietitian Bonnie Baxter of the Somerset West Community Health Centre.
Even when parents can afford to feed their kids, she says, they don’t always make the right decisions about what food to buy. “It’s a combination of not having enough money and, when they do have money, buying the wrong food for their kids. Fast foods are easier to buy.”
Emergency food centres such as Parkdale and other local school breakfast programs are doing what they can to combat the problem. At Glashan Public School on Arlington Avenue, $600 a month in toast, cereal and waffles are distributed to almost 20 per cent of the school’s 370 students each morning.
Vice Principal Paula Marinigh says the program helps so-called ‘latch-key’ kids — youngsters with parents too busy to make them a proper meal — as well as other unfortunates. All any Glashan student has to do is show up in the morning.
“We have kids from all walks of life sitting down to a good breakfast together,” she said. “There’s no stigma attached.”
Tilley says breakfast programs are helping kids become better eaters and, thus, better learners. “You can’t teach an empty stomach. These programs are driven by the courage and guts of volunteers, and they’re making a difference.”
He says his organization’s latest effort, the baby supply cupboard program, tries to help needy infants by providing formula, baby food and diapers to cash-strapped parents.
Back at Parkdale, Marsha’s been given a few tightly-packed shopping bags of meat, vegetables, bread and canned goods designed to last three or four days. Although she’s here today, she explains she only uses the Centre as a last resort. That’s because her children dislike the stigma attached to being emergency food recipients, she says.
“They’re so proud,” she says. “I don’t come a lot. I only come when I have to, like when we’re down to nothing.
“People have to realize that this problem only hurts kids.”