NEWS RELEASE
FOOD BANK OF YORK REGION
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The Food Bank of York Region (FBYR) has sadly hit a lull in the number of cash donations received this past April for its annual Spring Plant Compassion campaign. The FBYR normally executes three monetary campaigns each year to help raise funds from the community to support their ongoing programming and operational needs, as well as make food purchases. Compared to cash donations from last April’s spring campaign, monetary contributions have decreased significantly by 55 per cent.
“Monetary donations have continued to decline post-COVID and, unfortunately, that is not the case with food insecurity. Our network did see a small dip in how many people we are feeding once we entered a COVID-recovery period, but only by four per cent,” said Alex Bilotta, the FBYR founder and CEO.
“Whereas, we saw a 70 per cent increase in the number of people we were feeding from 2018 to 2020, prior to the pandemic beginning. We’re still feeding more people than ever before, and we don’t anticipate that need to change much in the coming months,” Bilotta added.
The FBYR is appealing to all residents of York Region to consider making a cash donation or gift to their non-profit organization instead of food donations at this time. Due to their capacity to source and collect bulk amounts of perishable and non-perishable food products on a full-time basis, they currently have plenty of food to go around and share among the network.
What they do need is funding to maintain their current programs and build upon new ones, hire and train staff to run these programs, purchase perishable food products as required, and support operational costs when it comes to their fleet of vehicles and general logistics.
The programs run by the FBYR support a network of more than 70 social service organizations and 23,000 unique individuals across 7,000 low-to-moderate income households in the region. When you support the FBYR, you indirectly support children, seniors, and individuals experiencing hunger and food insecurity. Cash contributions are vital to helping the FBYR feed more people when our society is facing high inflation rates in food and housing pricing.
Consider donating to the FBYR and help create stability in the lives of those who need it most. For more information on the FBYR and ways to donate, please visit the website.
The Food Bank of York Region is the regional food hub and mobile food pantry with a network of 70+ social service agencies and emergency home delivery programs. The network supports food programs in the nine municipalities of York Region, serving over 23,000 individuals in 7,000 households. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the number of people accessing food bank programs in the York Region by 42 per cent from 2018, expanding the threshold of food insecurity to a larger scale of members of our community.
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