GUYSBOROUGH — To meet surging demand after the holidays, the Guysborough & Area Food Bank reopened a week early this year.
“We realized some people might need help,” manager Elizabeth Connelly told The Journal in an interview last week, “so we opened on January 2 to provide for them.”
The food bank typically closes in December to process donations and deliver holiday orders across most of Guysborough County, resuming its regular Thursday service in the second week of January. But, Connolly reported, over the past few months, demand and the frequency of visits to the food bank have been increasing.
“Years ago, people would come in only once a month,” she said. “Now, we’re seeing them every two to three weeks. And you can understand why – even though we’re providing them with a fairly good order of food, if they don’t have a steady income to supplement it at the grocery store, it’s hard.”
Last March, Connolly noted a sharp increase in the number of people the food bank served, telling The Journal: “We’re busier than we’ve ever been [and] it’s ongoing. We’re now serving, on average, 37 clients a week ... I’d say [overall] we’re up by about 20 or 25 per cent.”
Volunteers were also “very busy” in December adapting to rising needs and a few surprises, she said last week. Feed Nova Scotia, for instance, provided cash donations to provincial food banks in its network instead of giving them turkeys and chickens to store.
“It actually worked very, very well for us. We didn’t have the space for [the birds], so we used the [cash] to buy gift cards – $50 for a family turkey and $25 for individual chickens. Nobody had any complaints.”
Meanwhile, she said, “Though we were a little bit worried that the mail strike may have impacted us this year, people dropped off donations to us or made arrangements to get the donations that we needed.... We also had some really good food drives this year, including the RCMP ones in Canso and Guysborough – the truck was completely full ... And the United churches in the whole area were very good to us.”
All of which, she remarked, is now providing a ray of sunshine into the new year. Cash donations continue to rise as the need shows no sign of abating.
“I can’t say the exact amount, but we have done very well.... Our whole Christmas season went very well.... Our hope is that nobody was left hungry.”
Accredited through Food Banks Canada’s national standards of excellence program and a member of Feed Nova Scotia – which supports a network of 140 food banks, shelters and meal programs across the province – the Guysborough & Area Food Bank is located at 10 Green St. in Guysborough, and can be reached at 902-533-2836. Regular hours are Thursdays between 12-2 p.m.
