While a lot of Winnipeg families will be sitting down to big turkey dinners this weekend, some may be struggling to find food to put on their plates this Thanksgiving.
That’s where Winnipeg Harvest comes in but the food bank has run into some challenges as it looks to feed Winnipeg’s less fortunate.
“Not only have our numbers gone up for the whole year, we’re now feeding 64,000 people every month,” Kate Brenner, Winnipeg Harvest executive director, said.
She said Harvest had a 53 per cent increase in July compared to the same period last year.
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“We’re seeing that part of the increase, a big part of the increase, would be due to immigrants and asylum seekers,” Brenner told Global News.
“We do whatever we can with what we have obviously,” Brenner said. “We do have people looking for Halaal. Over and above that, we have gluten-free kits, we have diabetic kits. So we have a number of different things but it’s all based on what we have here.”
Winnipeg Harvest is still collecting food and monetary donations ahead of Thanksgiving and welcomes any community volunteer support to handle calls and distribution this weekend.
“We’re currently in the middle of our largest food drive of the year actually, we call it Share Your Thanks,” Brenner said. “It’s been running since the middle of September actually… so we’ve been encouraging people to come down and donate since then.”
With many new and different mouths to feeds, Winnipeg Harvest is trying to be as accommodating as possible.
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