By Sarah Rae

Food bank hopes for summer donations after busiest month ever

May 10, 2016 | 5:13 PM

The shelves are getting bare at the Battlefords District Food and Resource Centre, and staff there want the community to step up and help them through the summer months.

Executive director Erin Katerynych said March was their busiest month ever and now they need to restock their shelves.

“We’ve had to reduce our food hamper size actually,” she said. “This last March we gave out 675 hampers that helped 2,182 people and that’s the most we’ve ever given out since 2005 when I started recording the numbers.”

She said they recently had to ask the food bank in Regina to spare any food, including baby food, to try to fill up the hampers.

Katerynych said the shelves normally begin to go bare around this time every year, but this year is worse than usual and they’ve seen a much greater demand since February.

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“Our biggest fundraiser is at Christmas time and normally the food we get then lasts us until about now. May and June are usually the months when we get the least amount of donations, so we’re just trying to get awareness out,” Katerynych said.

She said they normally have about 1,600 people per month and haven’t yet figured out why they’ve seen such a huge increase the last few months.

The Battlefords have always had a high amount of food bank users compared to places of similar size in Saskatchewan, she said, but they don’t understand the recent increase.

They’re holding a barbecue tomorrow, May 11 from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Sobeys to raise some money and spread awareness about the summer shortages. They’ll be serving smokies and hamburgers for $6, or $5 with a food donation.

The barbecue is part of Food Bank Canada’s “every plate full” campaign to raise awareness and money for food during the summer months. They say roughly 918,000 Canadians go hungry every summer.

Sarah.rae@jpbg.ca

@sarahjeanrae