by Alayne McGregor
The COVID-19 pandemic has put the Centretown Emergency Food Centre on thin ice–and it could use your help.
When panic buying started in mid-March, the food bank couldn’t buy many of the staples–beef, chicken, sugar, toilet paper, soup–its clients need. For the last two weeks, they’ve been giving Ottawa Food Bank gift cards instead.
Co-ordinator Kerry Kaiser has been cheered by “wonderful acts of kindness.” When the Lieutenant’s Pump on Elgin had to temporarily close, it donated all the produce it had on hand to the centre. Staff brought in “boxes of fresh produce, beautiful stuff. They’d rather give it to us than let it go to waste.”
The centre is located in Centretown United Church at 507 Bank Street. It serves those in need east of Lyon Street and west of Main, down to Billings Bridge.
The centre does not deliver. Allison Dingle, who chairs the centre’s management committee, said that has been difficult for many of its clients, who are staying indoors for fear of the virus or because they’ve been asked to self-isolate. The centre has also asked senior-age volunteers not to come in to avoid risking them and is working with a smaller core of younger volunteers. “We’re operating on a very small staff. It’s really a challenge still.” Staff are exhausted, she said.
“We couldn’t have kept at the pace we were serving people. We had to reduce our hours and reduce the amount of work that it takes to serve a client.” The centre is now only open on Monday and Friday from noon to 1 p.m., instead of four days a week.
Before COVID-19 clients could choose which food products they needed from the centre’s shelves. The centre will return to handing out food next week but it will be standard, pre-packaged bags of groceries. “We can’t say, “What kind of pasta do you want? What kind of tomato sauce would you like?” They just have to take it because we don’t have time to interview them.”
What the centre needs now is cash, she said. They don’t have the people to sort food donations, because they must limit the number of volunteers in the centre at one time.
The response has been good. “We have been getting a lot of donations. People have been very aware of how many people are in need in our community. We are still short of some things, but we’re doing pretty well. I think anyone who comes to us next week, we’re assuming we’ll be able to give them most of what we normally give.”
Kaiser suggested that the provincial government consider giving an emergency top-up to social assistance recipients so they could buy food themselves. Even an extra $100 would help: “This is setting us right back financially,” she said.
If the emergency lasts much longer, the situation will get more difficult. The centre survives on donations and its volunteer base. If it can’t use volunteers, its survival is threatened, and if clients get ill, they put the centre’s two staff and 70 volunteers at risk.
But “we’re here. We’re doing our very best for people, and people are grateful. We’re doing what we can do as well as we can,” Dingle said.
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The western part of Centretown is served by the Dalhousie Food Cupboard. It’s located in the Bronson Centre at 211 Bronson Avenue, and is open from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays. It serves those west of Lyon Street, west to Breezehill Avenue, and south to Carling Avenue.
The Cupboard also says it’s changing how it distributes food. It will only serve one client at a time, and is giving out pre-packed bags with available foods for a quicker, simpler turnaround.
Both centres have increased their disinfecting, cleaning, and use of disposable gloves.
For Food Assistance:
cefcottawa.org/if-you-need-food/
dalhousiefoodcupboard.ca/get-food.html
Donate:
To the CEFC: canadahelps.org/en/charities/centretown-churches-social-action-committee/ or send cheques to the centre at 507 Bank Street.
To the Dalhousie Food Cupboard: dalhousiefoodcupboard.ca/donate.html or send cheques payable to “Dalhousie Food Action Group Inc” to 211 Bronson Avenue, Suite 107.
Both food banks are registered charities.