OLDS — The Mountain View Food Bank has seen a surge in new sign-ups for their services since they moved to their new location in the former Olds fire hall on 50th Street, east of the railway tracks.
During a tour of the facility, food bank president Tayva Graham told the Albertan that since they opened their doors in their new location at the end of May, the organization has seen at least a 10 per cent growth in sign-ups from people wishing to access the food bank.
“The last few weeks, we've been doing 10 households a week,” she said. “Once upon a time a few months ago, or maybe last year, it was maybe three a week.”
“(We’re serving) 100 households plus,” she added.
Food bank director Pat Graham said, “And that could be three, 400 people that we’re feeding that week."
Pat said five or 10 years ago they’d be serving about 60 households.
Tayva said a significant segment of their clients are the working poor.
“I think it's really hard for families to make ends meet right now that are otherwise employed. It's hard out there, for families, and around the county,” she said.
Olds College students are likely another factor in the current surge of food bank users, Tayva said, noting the college’s food bank won’t open up until school restarts in the fall.
Tayva and Pat said their new location has been a boon. They’ve been located in various places in town over time, but for the last many years, the food bank was located in a provincial building on 50th Street near 51st Avenue.
The building is now up for sale. Pat says about two years ago, town officials asked them to move because the plan was to convert the provincial building to affordable housing. That change has not yet occurred.
Tayva said food bank officials signed the lease for their new location in about late December; renovations and cleanup started early in the new year.
Pat and Tayva are pleased with their new premises.
They didn’t gain much extra space. However, one of the most convenient aspects of the new location is that everybody and everything is now on the main floor of the building.
In their old premises, some food and some volunteers were down in the basement.
They also now have a loading dock, which is convenient for people dropping off food and volunteers loading it up.
The aisles between shelving are wider than they were in the old place.
“Now two people can go by, two carts, whereas last time, you had kind of to wait for one person to finish before you could get in there and then do your shopping,” Tayva said.
“We're utilizing the square footage a lot more optimally than before,” Pat said.
Tayva agreed.
“Our volunteers are happy, and our clients seem to be very happy,” she said.
Pat and Tayva say not much was done in the way of renovations, although several big doors across the front of the building were taken out and replaced to make an insulated wall.
The kitchen area was remodelled and a big barbecue was removed.
Pat said when renovations needed to be done, they sourced locally. “We didn't go anywhere out of town -- well, we went to Didsbury,” she said. We stayed in to support our own people.
“And that's the same with buying groceries. We do not go to Costco or to Superstore, one of those places; we buy right here. They support us, we support them.”
Other than that, it was mostly a case of cleaning the place up and painting.
Currently, the food bank is only open on Tuesdays.
Pat said they could be open more frequently, even seven days a week, if they could find the volunteers for that.
Food bank officials are looking at making lunches for students, starting this fall, if school officials say there’s a need for that, and that might require being open at least a second day a week.
“Maybe we'll make up or donate some things that could feed a kid at lunch, if they've come to school without a lunch, or they forgot their lunch, or whatever, so they're not hungry,” Pat said.
“We are going to take a survey and see if there is a need. You know, if it's feasible for us to open another day, because volunteers are always a concern.”
She said currently, about 25 to 30 volunteers help out at the food bank on a regular basis. If they opened more days, presumably they’d need more volunteers, and it might be hard to recruit enough.
“The volunteers that we attract, well, they’re all seniors, right? And so you can't say to them, ‘you must work this day.’ They come and they help us when they can,” she said.
Tayva said it’s also a question of logistics.
“We need to be open to get the fruit and vegetables in. We need the people to deliver it and the drivers to come around and pick up the reclamation from the grocery stores and the bread that they donate to us. So a lot of moving parts just to be open another day,” she said.
Pat noted that the food bank has a seven-day-a-week, 24-hour answering service.
“So if you're destitute today and you cannot wait until Tuesday, somebody will come down here and make you a hamper,” she said.
“We have emergency hampers,” she added. “Like, if a family breaks up and one of them takes all the food so they won't have anything, we or social security services come in and bring somebody in.
Even in the new location, the waiting room can get “a little congested in the mornings,” Tayva said.
Some clients are at the building as early as 7 a.m., even though the food bank doesn’t open until 9.
“They figure the early bird gets the best stuff, but really, it's the same stuff all day,” Pat said.
Pat was asked if they prefer food or monetary donations.
She said they’ll happily take both.
“I have to say that Mountain View County (region) has to be one of the most generous counties of all the communities that we serve. It really is, because that's how we survive. We don't have government money coming in.”
Pat is grateful for the support the food bank receives from residents of Mountain View County and the urban centres near it as well as businesses.
“The grocery stores are unbelievable,” she said.
