Staff of Life Food Bank in the Scarborough Rouge Park area serves a large minority population, and sees a high number of families with children, and seniors visiting their programs each week.
Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Staff of Life Food Bank was operating every Sunday for 2 hours, serving approximately 65 families each week. As the need for food has increased across our city, they now serve 130 families – double the amount.
This past year, Staff of Life Food Bank has seen, and overcome many challenges as they’ve worked to provide food access in their community. One of these challenges has been the lack of volunteers. Many of their volunteers were seniors, which meant that they could not longer support the food bank operations due to health and safety guidelines and concerns.
The increase in need, coupled with the lack of volunteers has meant many late nights for the team at Staff of Life Food Bank. Deeply committed to their community, they are often at the food bank until 11pm, having served people for upwards of 6 hours.
Natoya Anderson, Food Program Manager says that the support from donors and the community is what keeps them going. “The grants we’ve received from Daily Bread to purchase more food, and for refrigeration have been critical for us in providing people the healthy food they need.”
“We’ve had to work hard and make many personal sacrifices to ensure that the food bank could remain open. Our volunteers are so committed, they want to be part of the entire process. People are asking for way more than they did before the pandemic, and together we’re able to provide”
Natoya Anderson, Food Program Manager
On behalf of the staff, volunteers, and our community members, THANK YOU Staff of Life Food Bank. Your resiliency and leadership ensures that the most vulnerable among us, continue to have access to their right to food.
To make a donation to Daily Bread Food Bank to support the work of our agency partners, click here.
