Needs are Great as Thanksgiving Food Drive Kicks Off
The Ottawa Sun sat down with Michael Maidment days into his new role heading the Ottawa Food Bank.
Q. What has surprised you in your first week?
A. Going into the warehouse and seeing 21,000 square feet of food and starting to appreciate and understand, looking at those boxes, what that really means to nearly 50,000 families who receive help from the Ottawa Food Bank every month. It was an aha moment.
Q. We reported in June that food bank use is up 9% this year. Why?
A. There are many people who are coming to us for the first time. It could be a single mother who is struggling to balance the increased cost of daycare against buying healthy food for her children. It could be seniors living on a fixed income (facing) increased costs of medication, health care costs, housing costs. Something has to give.
Q. How is the fall shaping up?
A. We’re trying to get out there and remind people that the needs are great. We’re coming into fall and into the cold weather and we know that people are going to begin to turn to the Ottawa Food Bank more and more.
The shelves are probably a little less stocked than we would like but we know that we’re coming into one of the busiest periods of the year for the food bank.
