Calgary Food Bank city-wide drive runs Saturday

The Calgary Food Banks’s 19th annual city-wide food drive is Saturday morning.

It’s a massive undertaking that is essential to filling the shelves, and to help, all you have to do is fill up a bag and leave it on the curb.

More than 400,000 households got white compostable food bank bags hung on their front door this week, and on Saturday morning, thousands of volunteers will mobilize for pick-up.

CEO Melissa From says last year, the food bank distributed over 11 million pounds of food.

It’s largest drive ever brought in just under 650,000 pounds.

“Our big needs right now are the canned meat, the canned beans, canned veggies and of course some of the items for those littlest Calgarians we’re taking care of — like formula and diapers,” she said.

The organization says demand for its services continues to grow.

“Gosh, when I think back to last fall, we were distributing around 400 to 450 emergency food hampers each day out of our distribution centre here,” From said. “Right now we’re distributing 700 emergency food hampers a day.”

Funding from the feds

The federal government this week announced it will be contributing nearly $18 million to Canada’s food banks to help with period products.

From says this is great news because menstrual products are expensive and not everyone can afford them.

“I mean, you can well imagine the demographics of the people we serve. There are lots of women young and old who do require support in that way,” she said. “And, menstrual products are expensive — they’re not really affordable in that way.

“They are not an item that we often see frequently donated so it can be challenging to meet that need,” From added. “So this is a great program that we’re hopeful is going to help us a lot, help our clients a lot.”