Gift cards instead of food hampers offered by Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank for holidays

The Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank has had to make many changes this year and one they decided to make for the holidays is to not hand out food hampers.

Instead, the approximately 1,500 families and individuals who use the service will be given a protein, such as a turkey, ham or chicken, as well as a gift card to a grocery store.

The food bank's executive director Dianne McLeod says people seem to have appreciated the change.

"In the past, we've provided typical, you know, potatoes and carrots and apple pie and things like that. But not everyone necessarily wants to eat that type of food," she said. "By giving them gift cards, they're able to purchase whatever works for them."

The reason for the switch is also logistics: It would be too difficult to get everyone into the food bank to pack the hampers.

Instead, volunteers are standing at outdoor locations around the city to hand out the gift cards, which is a longer process, McLeod says.

"In years past, we would distribute all of our Christmas hampers within a day and a half, two days at the most," she said. "We are about halfway through. It's definitely a longer process because we can't have lots of people in one place."

Talking turkey

The turkeys this year were taken care of in a single donation. Albertino Domingues, owner of A.C.D. Wholesale Meats in Toronto, donated 1,500 turkeys to the food bank in memory of Frank Monteiro, the city councillor who died in 2019.

McLeod says Monteiro's wife, Fatima Pinheiro, helped facilitate the donation.

"Frank has always found the donation for us and we weren't sure if that was going to be able to continue with his passing. But his wife, Fatima, just really picked up the torch and made it happen again this year," McLeod said.

Looking ahead

McLeod says it feels like demand for the food bank's services has peaked for now, but with COVID-19, anything is possible in 2021.

She says she hopes the food bank's food co-operative can reopen in the new year. It was closed due to space constriction and pandemic restrictions. To join the program, people pay $10 per month and volunteer for four hours. In return, they can visit the food bank or an off-site location twice a month to shop for healthy food. It allows people to stretch their grocery budgets.

"Normally the food bank is a beehive of activity... [But due to COVID] we can't have a whole lot of people in the building," she said. "We're hearing from our members that they're really missing that program."

She says they're "going to get creative" and look at ways to bring the program to people's neighbourhoods in the coming months.

Other programs the food bank offers include a weekly community meal on Saturdays, a seed share, street outreach and various workshops through the food bank's mental wellness hub. McLeod says they're continuing to offer what they can online until people can come back into the building.

"We do delivery of products to people's homes so that they can participate in our cooking classes. We launched a food delivery program for people who are housebound, for people who are older, at risk of getting cold and having really serious complications," she said.

"We have a lot of good things happening here in addition to the food hampers we give out every day."

Every year, CBC Kitchener-Waterloo raises food and funds for The Food Bank of Waterloo Region through the Sounds of the Season campaign. Click here to make a donation.

To help the Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank with its Christmas campaign, click here to learn more.