Lanark food bank expecting increase in users at tax time
Posted Jan 3, 2021 08:15:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Food security isn’t just a big city problem — it’s a reality little communities like in Lanark County must also deal with.
According to Tammy Parent, manager of the Hunger Stop, the Lanark Food Bank usually serves about 290 families, or 700 people — 38 per cent of which are children.
“The community has come together during COVID, during christmas and our fall/winter campaign and have stepped up to the plate unlike ever before,” Parent said . “So the food donations, the financial donations — everybody’s responding in every way.”
But during the pandemic, Parent explains that they actually saw a drop in users. She speculates that it was because families were receiving financial help from the federal government.
However, Parent says the food bank is expecting those numbers to climb again come tax time when people are expected to pay back the financial help they got.
“There’s a higher number of people using the food bank that have employment,” Parent said. “We’re seeing families who are or were working — laid off — and a lot of clients who are on disability. That’s the clientele who has been most stable, because they weren’t seeing much support from the government.”
But Parent says people and families shouldn’t feel any shame in using a food bank,
“I do hope some day that there will be no need for me or this facility,” Parent said. “That’s our goal — we need work towards ending hunger. It’s not just to be here forever. The goal is to lobby with the government and work with the right people to offer a working living wage.”
The Hunger Stop is located at 84 Mill St. in Carleton Place. Parent explains that it doesn’t serve all of Lanark county, but extends from south of Franktown through Beckwith, Carleton Place, Almont, Packenham and Clayton, up to an including White Lake and then from Ashton across to Innisfil.
