The Clearwater and District Food Bank (CDFB) board and volunteers had a great day on Friday, October 6, when they were presented with a generous cheque for $10,000 from the Clearwater Curiosity Thrift Shoppe along with a KitchenAid mixer for the Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital (DHMH) kitchen.
CDFB treasurer Linda Selbee said she is thrilled with this recent donation.
“On behalf of the food bank we are so very lucky to be supported by the Clearwater Curiosity Thrift Shoppe once again. Even the food bank must make our dollars stretch farther these days and we seem to be purchasing more food for clients this year.”
Selbee said CDFB’s food hampers feed one person for approximately five to seven days, so a client can come in, one Thursday each month and pick up a hamper.
“This donation will help us so much because Christmas is coming and it’s getting colder.”
Selbee estimates with the holidays fast approaching and entering the winter months, December through March are all expensive months for everyone due to the high price of food and additional expenses like heating, electricity and fuel.
“Clearwater (Food Bank) is very fortunate; we get such support from our area. We are always scrambling to find enough healthy food and variety of food. It can’t all be instant. Just because you are low income doesn’t mean you have to eat unhealthily. That is a real challenge for all food banks, providing healthy options.”
The CDFB receives fresh produce from approximately five local gardeners who donate and at this time of year they receive a lot of root vegetables, squash and zucchini for clients accessing the once-a-month hampers.
“We are on a food program with the Buy Low grocery store here and it’s pretty good, mainly excess or pulled produce. The local Rotary club helps in delivering that to us two days a week. We sort it, clean it and it must go out right away. We don’t store fresh produce for long periods of time. Our food bank, I’m proud to say, runs well. We have a couple of gentlemen doing all the recycling for any cardboard, we have a few local farmers that pick up the produce which isn’t good enough to distribute to clients and they feed that to their livestock. We also have an excellent volunteer base in our centre in Clearwater. We are at the stage where everything is running smoothly right now with enough volunteers at the moment, as long as no one gets sick. We have people that come in occasionally to fill in the slack when we are busy. We run on about eight volunteers inside the food bank along with Rotary assistance and Jeff Orum who help us with food deliveries.”
Selbee added that as a 100 per cent, volunteer-run food bank, many take on a variety of jobs such as purchasing, packing, cleaning, and sorting.
“As an organization reliant on donations and funding, the food bank team is thankful for the ongoing cash donations, often dropped off or sent via cheque or etransfers. We couldn’t do this without the generosity and support of our community,” says the treasurer.
Everyone working with the organization gets along really well she says and the regular routine runs very smoothly as a team, with a backup call list in place when they need extra hands.
“The majority of work is always on the Thursday when we are open. Jeff delivers on Thursdays when we are building the hampers and putting them out. We have a grocery pick up that delivers on Wednesday and the Rotary delivers on Saturdays and Mondays. We divide up the work and between us and many of our family or spouse ‘voluntows’ as I call them, we manage to coordinate everything together.”
Currently the CDFB is serving approximately 150 to 200 people a month. The area of operation covers from Blue River to Round Top, which is halfway to Little Fort from Clearwater. Although they don’t operate a delivery service, when a client drives down from Blue River they pick up for anyone there and the Avola and Vavenby clients drive to Clearwater for their hampers.
“There have been times if folks are really stuck we try to help, but it’s not a service we can really supply, unless it’s an extreme circumstance. Our volunteers are limited. We find that people are really good at looking out for one another.”
The food bank team is very diligent about stretching the donated funds and grants received as far as possible says Selbee.
“With a donation such as the one received from the Clearwater Curiosity Thrift Shoppe, which we are so very grateful for, this donation goes strictly towards grocery purchases. It’s so important to us that our contributors realize how much their donations help to keep the food bank running and help those families locally with nourishing food. All the decisions that we make are for the betterment of our clients. We continuously ask ourselves what more we can do and how we can continue to provide support.”
This year a new partnership with the local Clearwater New Life Assembly Church will enhance the spirit of Christmas for the children in the valley with the church offering to coordinate all the toy donations. The church will pick up toy donations from the food bank, or people can drop off with them at the church prior to Christmas. Another great example of community partnering at work in the North Thompson, said Selbee.
