Food banks in Manitoba have been seeing a significant rise in the number of working families looking for assistance.
And that goes back for quite some time.
“We have noticed that there’s a lot more working families that are coming in,” said Susan Brown, the lead coordinator for Charleswood Caring and Sharing.
The group has been providing hampers for clients living within Charleswood since 2014.
“There have been challenges, of course, because of layoffs, reduced hours. And obviously the increase in the price of groceries,” she continued.
Brown says she first started noticing a shift in the demographic of her clients early on in the pandemic.
“Normally they were finding that they could get through month to month because we operate on a monthly basis,” said Brown.
“But now they definitely aren’t quite able to make ends meet through that whole period of the month. So they just need to have some extra supplies during that time.”
So every Thursday, the Charleswood group opens it’s doors for pick-up.
Along with many other food banks across the province, they’re being supplied with a record amount of food by Harvest Manitoba.
“14,000 households across the province that, without this food support, would really have a very challenging time meeting the basic needs of themselves and their and their families,” said Harvest Manitoba’s president and CEO, Vince Barletta.
Barletta expects the number of people looking for support to rise even higher as we head into the summer months.