Demand is 'spiking': Feeding Calgary's kids in a pandemic

A school teacher in Bowness. A youth advocate in Ogden. A decades-old school lunch charity. They share a common goal in trying to help feed hungry children in Calgary whose families have been shaken by a year-long pandemic. 

As families have struggled —financially, emotionally and socially — so too have the volunteers and organizations whose goal is to feed kids.

"Hungry kids can't learn," said Megan Dobchuk-Land, a Calgary teacher who started up a lunch program in the days right after the COVID-19 pandemic was declared and schools were closed in March 2020.

"Our first reaction was, what are we going to do?"

Dobchuk-Land, another teacher and a group of volunteers knew the closures would leave vulnerable children without access to breakfast and lunch programs, so they put together a plan involving a couple of restaurants that had also been closed.

A fundraising campaign and a government grant to re-hire restaurant staff launched their program which ran through the summer, handing out 19,000 bagged lunches and 7,500 frozen meals over six months.

Dobchuk-Land said it touched many lives. The program not only fed children but re-hired restaurant staff and connected people who wanted to make a difference.

"We have so many volunteers that stepped up to do that work that really saw the need as much as us," said Dobchuk-Land.

"I think that the need is not going away, it's only increasing."

From hoops to bagged lunches

The Youth Centres of Calgary used to offer a place for kids to hang out after school, do their homework, shoot some hoops, play games and get something to eat. But the pandemic forced Jane Wachowich to close down the space and pivot to a food preparation and distribution hub at the modest two-storey home in the southeast community of Ogden.

Volunteers assemble bag lunches in the garage behind the house, load them into their vehicles and deliver them to pick-up spots in several south and northeast neighbourhoods.

"We were being told by school principals and the social workers with whom we work that the kids were going to be hungry, the kids were likely not to be fed at school, agencies were in an upheaval, we had to close our doors, but we also knew that we needed to stay connected with the kids in the community," said Wachowich.

Donors chipped in with either food or money and the program has taken off. Prepared lunches, frozen meals, fruits, veggies and snacks are now being offered seven days a week — on average about 200 meals a day.

Last Wednesday afternoon, children started lining up outside the house waiting to grab some of the goodies.

Wachowich said she'll probably keep going for a few more months — but she said it's going to be difficult to stop.

"We'll continue through the summer or at least until we see that the need has subsided, and right now we're seeing it spiking."

School lunch program pivots

One of the city's long-standing school lunch programs said it was hit hard by the pandemic and admits it was slow to pivot after schools were shut down.

"In the early days, it would be fair to say that there were some challenges," said Tanya Koshowski, the executive director of Brown Bagging for Calgary's Kids (BB4CK) during an interview last fall.

Today, Koshowski said it has jolted the charity into rethinking how it operates.

The organization uses various kitchens and volunteers across the city to prepare and deliver bagged lunches for kids at school. It also provides funding to schools to buy groceries and make their own meals for students. And, since the pandemic, it started offering $40 grocery gift cards directly to families whose children haven't returned to class.

Koshowski said it's providing bagged lunches for about 3,900 children a day — while 1,768 gift cards were mailed out this month.

Bagged lunches down 17%

That means BB4CK is no longer providing lunches to approximately 1,100 kids a day — Koshowski said that's down 17 per cent. She said the pandemic is forcing them to look at potentially new longer-term strategies.

"We're now looking at kind of a bigger, systemic issue of maybe we need to change how we access and care for these kids and these families," she said.

The organization has been around for 30 years. It has an annual budget of $4 million and 18 employees.

The Calgary Board of Education says BB4CK is working in 123 of its schools, while the Calgary Catholic School District said 64 of its schools are involved. The CBE said 35 schools are on hold because of issues related to food-handling permits. 

Demand for food rising

The volunteers, non-profit organizations and charities know the demand for food is not easing.

"We're not seeing a reduction in kids, we're seeing growth," said Wachowich.

She said what they're doing is not going to end child poverty or unemployment.

"There's a lot of new need in the city," said Wachowich.

"Kids need what they need right now. And we're motivated by that."

Bryan Labby is an enterprise reporter with CBC Calgary. If you have a good story idea or tip, you can reach him at bryan.labby@cbc.ca or on Twitter at @CBCBryan.