At the end of January, our weekly food program moved to a new location inside the Kimbourne Park United Church in the East Danforth neighbourhood, and our team is feeling so fortunate to be able to run our program out of this beautiful, spacious spot.

“The church has been such an amazing partner in helping us along the way — they’re super supportive,” says Amanda Nobile, our Community Support & Outreach program coordinator. “And the space itself has been great. It’s so nice to have a larger space where we can spread out more. It’s been very smooth in the way that we’ve set it up to hand out food to our clients. It’s also just a beautiful, calm space, with a really nice energy. It feels very nice to be in this beautiful place that we’re so welcomed in.”

Every week, 120 families rely on our food program to access a basic human need — that’s as much as double the number we were serving just a year prior. And there are another 60 families we could be serving if we had the resources. Our new, larger location provides the space to potentially expand our program, but in order to do so, we’ll need to secure additional food donations, and have the people power for client administration, food sorting, and cleaning. Currently our team is working on grant applications to help us purchase fridges and freezers for our new location, which would allow us to store more fresh food, and start offering weekly milk, eggs, meat, and bread for our clients.

As with most food programs, we depend on donations from our community and agencies. Every Tuesday morning, our friends at Second Harvest — a food rescue charity — deliver fresh, frozen, and packaged foods. From week to week, we fill food baskets with a wide variety of foods, like fresh fruit and vegetables, pasta and rice, peanut butter, and milk. We round out each basket with stock from our own non-perishable food pantry to ensure that each family receives a nourishing mix of protein, canned and boxed goods, and produce.

While we work towards adding more fresh food to our offerings, Amanda hopes that we’ll be able to start increasing the amount of food we can provide to our clients each week. “I know a lot of our clients go to more than one food bank,” says Amanda. “I’m hoping we’ll be able to eliminate that, that they’re not going to have to run around and go to multiple different food banks — they’ll only have to do a one-stop shop and have enough food for the week.”

Now that we’ve settled in our new location, we’ve been thrilled to see the many ways this larger space can enhance our food program experience and increase the number of families we support through this crucial service. “[In our previous location], we used to only be able to have a few volunteers, especially since the space was small,” explains Amanda. “But now we’ve been able to get volunteers through the church as well, and they’ve been such an amazing help. It’s way less stressful and the whole production of everything is just so much quicker.”

Thank you again to Kimbourne Park United Church for being such an amazing partner, and helping us provide an enhanced food program experience for our Nellie’s clients!

To make a secure online donation to our food program, please donate here.