By Adam Donnelly

Facing Hunger: The future of the Kamloops Food Bank

Feb 22, 2019 | 3:57 PM

KAMLOOPS — Year after year, the number of people the Kamloops Food Bank serves continues to rise — from over 6,100 clients in 2017 to more than 7,000 in 2018. Thanks to support from the community, as well as innovation from Food Bank staff, they’re able to provide everyone who walks through that door with the food they need to get through the week — but if the trend continues, will they be able to keep up with demand? In the final instalment of Facing Hunger, we look at that growing need, and what the Kamloops Food Bank is doing to help address the root cause of hunger in Kamloops.

In March 2018, Food Banks Canada tracked every visit to all the food banks across Canada — what they found was staggering.

“The 1.1 million visits to food banks in March 2018, that’s unacceptable,” Kirstin Beardsley, Chief Network Services Officer at Food Banks Canada explains. “Across BC, that looks like 126,000 visits to food banks in one month. so we need to figure out how to bring those numbers down.”

While many communities may struggle to feed those seeking help, Beardsley says the Kamloops Food Bank, through their work in building capacity and those crucial partnerships within the community, are in a unique position to ensure no go goes wanting.

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“I think what Bernadette does is bring such positive energy and such a sense of leadership,” Beardsley says. “She solves problems; she builds strong relationships… within the community, with retailers, with donors, and do something special.”

Those partnerships, like FoodShare, Basics for Babies and the Rotary Food Drive has allowed Bernadette and her staff to look beyond the everyday issue of finding enough food to go around and focus on some big-picture ideas.

“We’re trying to address hunger on both ends of the spectrum,” Kamloops Food Bank Executive Director Bernadette Siracky says. “The emergency food provision is what we do every day. While we’re doing that, we need to look at the other end of the spectrum: Why are people in our lineup to begin with? They’re living at or below the poverty line. The reasons are exceptional different; they’re as individual as each person who walks through our doors.”

While the issue is involved, the Kamloops Food Bank is working with the community to find answers to reducing the need and dressing the root cause of poverty.

“You can’t put all your energy on one side of the spectrum or the other because then it’s imbalanced. we need to do both,” Siracky says. “Looking at food insecurity is a big piece of what we’re doing.”

But until they’re able to ensure each end every family can afford the necessities every month, they’ll continue to rely on the generosity of Kamloops to provide they’re able to keep facing hunger in our community.

“We don’t get core government funding, so I think there’s often… a perception that we have this funding and that the [fundraising] events are a nicety,” Siracky says. “That’s not the case. The events are a necessity. We need to raise money for our operation, to provide all of this food to all of these people. Kamloops does support this effort, and I’m truly grateful for that.”

For more parts of this series, go here.