The Moose Jaw & District Food Bank is always looking for new ways to better serve its clients.
With that in mind, this week the Food Bank announced that they are now accepting e-transfers and have started a new “kids snack bags” programs.
“I like to tour other food banks and I went to the Kamloops Food Bank and I noticed that that’s one of the projects that they have there are these kids snack bags,” said Deann Little, assistant manager/development manager for the Moose Jaw & District Food Bank. “For each child in a household they get a back of snacks. We often have parents asking for snacks that they can send with their kids for school and kids are always hungry, of course, too.”
The snack bags contain items like pudding/ fruit cups, granola bars, crackers, cookies and fruit snacks.
Little said that the Food Bank is always looking for ways to make it easier for the community to support them. They accept cash, cheques and online donations and can now accept e-transfers. There is a “donate now” button on their Facebook page.
“You have to change and grow with the times,” Little said. “For the longest time we just accepted cash or cheques here and then we ended up getting connected with CanadaHelps so on our website we can accept various forms of payment that way. A lot of people are doing e-transfers now, so we improved and went up to that.”
For the Food Bank, cash donations come in handy when it comes to purchasing dairy products.
“We helped 1,542 families last year and so we like to be able to give households who have school-aged children milk. It’s a good source of calcium and protein and nutrients that are necessary for them,” Little said. “As well, eggs are a fantastic source of protein. We try to get as many eggs as possible, but there are times where there are funds that don’t allow that to happen. So we’re trying to increase the monetary donations that come in so we can continue doing that.”
Little notes that they have been short of making their budget over the last few and so they are seeking new ways to increase our monetary funding. While money is tight at the Food Bank, Little said their food levels are doing well.
“We just had a big fundraiser from Dance Images by B.J.That brought in 1,466 pounds of food on Sunday,” Little said in reference to the dance group’s annual Dance for Hunger Weekend. “There’s some other food drives that are going on and that all helps. No matter the size, whether it’s big or small, every single one helps to keep our shelves filled. The more we get, the more we can hand out to those that are struggling in our community.”
