It’s costing more to fuel up your tank and put dinner on the table and for many, it means turning to local organizations to make sure their families don’t go hungry.
Harvest Manitoba said demand for hampers is at an all time high and it continues to break its previous records.
“This is the fifth month in a row that we’ve had volumes of over 11,000 households across Manitoba needing hampers support,” CEO and president Vince Barletta told Global News. “That represents some 34,000 Manitobans, half of them children that are receiving hampers from Manitoba.”
READ MORE: Harvest Manitoba says demand for food hampers at a record high
Barletta said volunteers work six days a week packing, preparing and delivering hampers across the province.
“We’ve never seen those kind of volumes before and we’re expecting that to continue for the months ahead,” he said.
He said they have seen an increase of 30 to 40 per cent of their pre-pandemic volumes and with rising fuel prices he expects that number could increase even further.
“It’s tough on a lot of people. You’ve got that expense, you’ve got food, you’ve got rent and oftentimes the only place that people can take money out of their budget… it’s their food budget. It’s the only place they’ve got any flexibility,” he said.
Inflation is also wreaking havoc on Harvest Manitoba’s bottom line. Barletta said they anticipated it would cost about $60,000 to fuel its fleet of vehicles this year but that could drastically change if gas prices continue to soar.
READ MORE: Annual inflation rises to 5.1% in January: Statistics Canada
Siloam Mission said it’s services are full and they are running at capacity most days.
“There’s people who are living kind of on that edge and sometimes it doesn’t take very much for them to go from precariously housed to unhoused,” communications manager Luke Thiessen said.
The organization also heavily relies on donations which it expects will likely slow down as people pinch pennies to stay within their budgets.
“We might expect to see some decreasing donations of those food items and then we might have to start purchasing them more,” communications manager Luke Thiessen said. “And if people are, you know, a little bit tighter on the budget as some of these costs are rising, potentially financial donations might be taking a hit.”
Siloam relies on donations to cover 90 per cent of its food costs and Thiessen said he’s concerned for what the coming weeks and months hold.
“We don’t have a huge budget for food, so that would mean taking money from other programs or finding ways to make that work,” he said. “And if it’s money having to come from other program areas, you know, that’s a tough decision to make.”
Both organizations are hopeful Manitobans will continue to open up their wallets to help those less fortunate even while trying to live within their own means.
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