NOTABLE PROGRAMS

Many school-directed child food support initiatives are closed down during the summer months. In order to fill the hunger gap during this time, the After the Bell program was created.

Thanks to the support of our generous corporate partners, Food Banks Canada has been able to:

• Supply 8 weeks of healthy food packs to help keep children fed through July and August in select communities across the country
• Deliver 150,000 food packs to over 180 communities in every province and territory

The healthy Food Packs are made up of two components: perishable and non-perishable items.

• Food Banks Canada acquires and assembles the non-perishable food and then distributes these packs, along with grants, to local food banks across the country
• Local food banks then use these grants to purchase fresh, perishable produce, which gets added to the packs before being distributed to children

Click here to learn more about our After the Bell program

Funds provided to food banks for investing in infrastructure such as refrigeration, transportation, and warehouse equipment—helping them to accept and distribute more fresh food items safely and efficiently.

Capacity Boost: Food Banks
Enables food banks to improve and expand their organizational capacity to increase the amount of perishable and non-perishable items they are able to accept to better meet the needs of the community.

Capacity Boost: Hubs
Supports larger food bank hubs by providing them with the means to improve their ability to acquire and share food more efficiently across their region.

Capacity Boost: Provincial Associations
Helps to build province-wide effectiveness and improve the operational capacity of provincial associations over the year in the areas of Member Services and Provincial Government Advocacy.

Nurtures local garden and growing programs to support the growth and increased consumption of fresh food amongst participants—building valuable gardening skills and a sense of community in the process.

Food Banks Canada recognizes the important role fresh food plays in a nutritious diet.

The +Fresh initiative is all about providing food banks with more of these types of foods including fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, and dairy products. Plus we work with local food producers to arrange large-scale donations of fresh and frozen items. We’re hoping to expand these types of partnerships to further support food banks as they continue to diversify the types of food they offer to recipients.

In addition, we created the Gardens and Growing Program to support gardening initiatives at food banks.

Community gardens help bring communities together by offering a valuable source of fresh foods to program participants, as well as local food and meal programs. Plus they teach people how to grow their own food and prepare/preserve the harvest. Skills they can use in their everyday life or a future career.

Supported our network by funding program development and equipment purchases to help organizations provide food-focused education and skills-building initiatives.

Through this grant-based program, food bank recipients learned about:

• Food literacy, including how to read labels
• How to shop for groceries on a tight budget
• Nutrition/how to make good food choices
• Kitchen skills, such as meal planning and preparation

A wide range of people benefited from participating in the Kitchen Creations program:

• Individuals living alone with limited meal preparation facilities
• Kids or teens that prepare their own snacks or meals
• First-time parents cooking for young families

In addition to valuable skills training, program participants also benefited from a sense of community by learning together, sharing meals, and exchanging advice.

35% of food banks are located in rural and remote communities. These sparsely populated, widely scattered, and geographically isolated areas face a unique set of challenges.

The most significant of these challenges is the cost of transporting food, which is much higher than in dense urban centres.

In addition, food banks operating beyond the urban core generally have fewer sources of food donations, which means they must often pay out of pocket for everyday essentials, such as bread or milk, in order to complete food hampers. This, along with a smaller donor base for financial contributions, can easily create hardship for these organizations.

Food Banks Canada supported the needs of food banks in rural, remote, and agricultural areas through the Rural Transportation Grant.

The funding provided by the grant helped food banks in smaller communities (with populations under 15,000) by reimbursing them for some of the essential expenses required for collecting and delivering food donations across large distances. This included transportation costs such as renting trucks, hiring third-party transportation, maintaining or repairing vehicles owned by the food banks, and purchasing gas.