{"id":30471,"date":"2021-12-16T18:25:07","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T23:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30471"},"modified":"2021-12-16T18:29:41","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T23:29:41","slug":"donations-still-high-but-down-slightly-from-pandemic-peak-at-aurora-food-pantry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/donations-still-high-but-down-slightly-from-pandemic-peak-at-aurora-food-pantry\/","title":{"rendered":"Donations still high but down slightly from pandemic peak at Aurora Food Pantry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is a busy time of year for the Aurora Food Pantry \u2013 busy handling donations and serving community members in need as the holidays quickly approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But despite the Aurora Food Pantry hitting peak donations last year as the community grappled with COVID-19, although donations are still high, they are slightly waning this year, according to Allison Stuart, Board Chair for the Aurora Food Pantry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we talk about donations, we\u2019re talking about financial donations and food donations,\u201d says Stuart. \u201cBoth are not as high as last year but the community continues to support the food pantry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked why she thinks there might be a slight downturn, Ms. Stuart says the experience of going through the pandemic has \u201cmade everyone a bit more aware of their own circumstances and the circumstances of people around them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDonations are still higher than three years ago, but they are not as high as they were in the midst of the pandemic,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demand at the Food Bank was \u201cquite high\u201d at the beginning of the pandemic, she says, but this levelled off as some government benefit programs came into the equation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven before they were having an impact, people knew it was coming and that made a difference for them,\u201d says Ms. Stuart. \u201cI\u2019m always touched and surprised by this, but most of our clients won\u2019t take home what they don\u2019t need. If they see cans of tomato soup on our shelves, they will say, \u2018No, I have two cans at home. I will leave that for someone who needs it.\u2019 They have the same approach to food banks overall. If they don\u2019t need it, they don\u2019t come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur numbers did go down a bit at the height of the pandemic [with people taking advantage of the financial programs], but one of the changes is that it used to be about a third of the people who came to the Food Pantry came three times or fewer in a year and the numbers who came pretty well every month were at around 10 per cent. That is changing in the number of people who come fewer than four times a month has gone down and the number of people who come every month. For some people, it has become less of a temporary \u2018just tide me over until\u2019 thing. People are struggling to find that \u2018until.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t alter how we\u2019re going to support them, but to me it tells a bit more of the story of some of these challenges really getting entrenched and finding it hard to get out of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rising cost of food is a contributing factor, she says, as is the affordable housing crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can sort of give up on food, but you can\u2019t give up on housing,\u201d says Ms. Stuart of the hard choices some families have to make between food and rent. \u201cYou have to pay your rent and everything else will suffer as a result and I think that is what we will continue to see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help those in need in the community, some of the high-demand items currently being experienced by the Food Pantry include produce, particularly frozen veggies and fruit, canned versions of the same, and frozen meat for their new walk-in freezer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are well-stocked on the staples of dry pasta and peanut butter, but the Food Pantry asks that potential donors also consider culturally-specific food donations, including dates, eggplant, and zucchini. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Size 4 diapers are also a big item in need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Food Pantry asks that people check the Best Before dates on items before they donate. In recent months, some cans and jars that have come in expired before some of the student volunteers helping sort the items were born \u2013 and disposing of these items creates an unnecessary cost for the charity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen it gets caught, we have to put it in the garbage and we have to pay to have it hauled away,\u201d says Ms. Stuart. \u201cThis often happens when people are moving house, but please check the items. It makes a huge difference to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a busy time of year for the Aurora Food Pantry \u2013 busy handling donations and serving community members in need as the holidays quickly approach. But despite the Aurora Food Pantry hitting peak donations last year as the community grappled with COVID-19, although donations are still high, they are slightly waning this year, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/2021-12-16-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7Vt","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 06:30:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}