For many Sudburians waking up in the morning, they are filled with question about how they will fill their day.
For young people, this may include a summer job, vacation, or a trip to the beach with friends. But for an increasing number of youth, the questions they wake up to are far more critical and timely with no immediate answers.
The fundamental questions they ask include; Will I eat today? Where will I sleep? Will I be safe? How will I make it through the summer?
The summer can signal tough times for many children who rely on breakfast, lunch and snack programs at their local schools. As we all know, one cannot stress how crucial it is to start the day with a healthy breakfast.
It strengthens your metabolism, can drastically boost energy levels and makes your body less susceptible to disease. According to humanleaguesudbury.com an astounding 42 per cent of Canadian youth go to school without breakfast, and even more are without the proper food and nutrition, throughout what can be a very long day.
While it’s fantastic that these certain programs are readily available during the school year, what happens when school is out for two months and the food supply seemingly dries up? Exactly what you would expect, youth go hungry.
As a matter of fact, millions of youth go hungry in Canada every day of the year, silently and without public notice. The result for many families is to further go into debt and make deeper cuts to their standard of living in order to attempt to provide the fundamental necessities of life for their family.
Unfortunately, it is not only the youth who are dramatically affected as a result of the summer lull, the entire community is impacted. Elderly people, young children, and the middle aged, all succumb to hunger’s non-discriminatory reach.
As a direct result, crucial community supports become integral to ensuring the success of all demographics. Specifically, in these busy times the food banks become even more crucial to helping address the immediate problem at hand. While common assumptions prevail — that summer is a much slower time for food banks — the reality could not be farther from the statement.
Summer is in fact one of the busiest times of the year, but is often met with little help in the way of volunteers and donations. More than 918,000 Canadians are expected to access a food bank over July and August this year, according to a recent Food Banks Canada report.
This amounts to a total of 26.5 million meals. Hunger surely doesn’t take a summer vacation and neither does the food bank.
Susan Platt, co-ordinator for Sarnia-Lambton's Salvation Army, put it best when she said, “We've been using the analogy that we're a lot like squirrels — we gather up all of this food in the winter and the spring because we know once June hits, donations drop off to almost nothing.”
This sentiment is something shared with food banks within our community and across the nation.
Personally, when I started volunteering at the Sudbury Food Bank a number of years ago, I found my education had only begun with respect to the ways in which the food bank is such an integral part of our community. Volunteer vacancies are always in need of filling at the food bank. Sorting food, setting up for events and putting together orders are just a few of the various things the food bank could use help with.
The food bank is not just about canned food and peanut butter, while they are very important items.
In reality, the food bank needs everything — simply stated, if you can use it in your home then they can surely use it in theirs. Working with amazing volunteers, staff and community leaders, the philosophy that hunger knows no boundaries and that every person should have access to a healthy balance of all the food groups to sustain a healthy body and lifestyle resonates with everything the food bank does on a daily basis.
While creatively ensuring that products are available for all the people who require it, they also continue to be very innovative in response to emerging needs and opportunities.
An example of this is illustrated by the food bank actually setting up the first few community gardens to add to their growing supply of fresh produce, as well as supporting the growth of the Sudbury Good Food Box program. The food bank is also working to develop in community kitchens to assist young people with life skills that they can take and use in the real world.
All these new initiatives are a continuation of the efforts of the food bank to work with the community to provide sustenance to everyone in an incredibly dignified and respectful manner.
I have been a volunteer with the food bank for more than four years and I can say without a doubt that it is one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life young life.
Although all of the aforementioned questions can’t be answered all at once, the Sudbury Food Bank presents a very good, immediate and long-term solution to the issue of hunger.
Take some time out of your day to spread awareness about the issue at hand, hunger. What big or small things can you do to help people that are less fortunate than you? Share your personal stories, voice your concerns and questions, and ponder solutions.
By galvanizing the overall voice of hunger across Canada, we can come one step closer to strengthening our community as a whole and eradicating hunger.
Christopher McCormick is a Grade 12 student at Lo-Ellen Park Secondary. He is the co-founder, along with his brother, William, of the charitable organization A Place To Call Their Home.
