DETAILS
The St. Albert Food Bank's first annual Spring Food Drive
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday May 1
Please put your donations in the bins at the following seven locations across St. Albert:
•Save-On Foods North (740 St. Albert Trail)
•Save-On Foods South (140 St. Albert Trail)
•Safeway (395 St. Albert Road)
•Safeway (300-2 Hebert Road)
•Sobeys (392 St. Albert Road)
•Pearson’s Your Independent Grocer (98 St. Albert Trail)
•Red Willow Community Church (15 Corriveau Avenue)Please call 780-459-0599 or visit stalbertfoodbankandcommunityvillage.com to learn more about the organization, its services and programs, and to request a hamper.
Food Bank Wish List:
- Baby formula
- Canned fruit
- Canned meats/fish
- Canned milk/powdered milk
- Canned soups and dry soup cups
- Canned tomatoes
- Canned vegetables
- Coffee
- Crackers
- Diapers (all sizes)
- Flour
- Fruit cups/pudding cups
- Granola bars
- Hamburger helper
- Jam and peanut butter
- Kraft Dinner
- Oatmeal and instant breakfast oatmeal
- Pancake mix and syrup
- Pasta sauce
- Personal care items
- Salt
- Side Kicks
- Sugar
- Tea
- Tomato paste
The St. Albert Food Bank also accepts fresh produce and frozen food items. Produce is in particularly short supply at the moment, says executive director Suzan Krecsy.
When there are more and more mouths at the supper table, inevitably you will run out of food. That’s the harsh reality that the St. Albert Food Bank is trying to avoid.
“The cupboards are starting to look a bit bare. If we're going to continue having to give out 60,000 pounds, we just need to bump it up a bit," said Suzan Krecsy, the food bank's executive director.
Krecsy says that “bump up” is the primary reason for the organization’s first-ever Spring Food Drive, planned for Saturday, May 1. While the regular annual Food Drive is still on the calendar for September, this new event is meant to be a yearly booster somewhere near the midway mark to help keep the pantry stocked a little more evenly.
It was only a decade ago that food hampers were given to approximately 1,600 families during an entire 12-month span. When the economy experienced a major downturn in 2015, demand at the food bank went right up – and stayed there.
Right now, the food bank supports between 280 to 300 families each and every month, with some months angling steeper toward the 400 level. Last year, nearly 4,000 families were active clients.
“It's busy, but it's manageable. That's why we're going to have the food drive,” she continued. “We're giving out about 60,000 pounds of food a month. We need to replenish. We're starting to run short.”
There are also between 20 to 30 new families signing up as clients each month as well, another indication that the economy is a long way off from where it was in 2011. Those new clients generally don’t show up just looking for food supports. Most often, they have complex, multi-layered issues contributing to their situations, such as unemployment or homelessness. The social workers at the Community Village side of the food bank work to help people to solve those tricky problems in order to best alleviate the demand for food.
It’s always a busy place and Krecsy remains deeply appreciative for the support that good citizens and community-oriented businesses have always offered, especially when these drives come along. She paid special thanks to D’Arcy’s Meat Market as well as Walmart and Costco for some wonderful meat donations.
She also gave a huge shout out to several local service clubs that are co-hosting the new Annual Spring Drive, including the St. Albert Host and Breakfast Lions, the Rotary Club of St. Albert, the Canadian Progress Clubs and CPC S.I.L.K.S., and the ACT/UCT St. Albert Council, as well as the fine folks at the Red Willow Community Church. That church organizes a veritable squadron of volunteers for the Food Drive in the Fall when children go back to school and the shelves typically empty out a bit faster.
But this is not September. Krecsy stopped short of calling the new May 1 event a "Mayday" situation even though the food stores in her warehouse are reminiscent of the end of summer.
“We've never had a Spring Drive. We thought we'd give it a go.”
