For nearly a decade, the Blandford-Blenheim Helping Hands Food Bank has been assisting local families by providing nutritious food and essential supplies during challenging times.
Officially established in 2016, the food bank serves all of Bright, Drumbo, Plattsville, Washington, Princeton, Gobles, Canning, Wolverine and Richwood.
Suzy Birley, who operates the organization, said she started the food bank several years prior out of a desire to help those in need.
“I started out just helping a few local people that I knew of that were having some struggles because of health and whatnot,” she said. “I would put out a post saying, ‘can anybody bring some food so we can help this family?’ and so that’s kind of how it started. I was doing that for a while when our mayor, Mark Peterson, said to me, ‘Suzy, I think we need to turn this into an actual food bank because there’s clearly a need for it.”
Peterson’s mother soon started helping to store and sort the food bank’s inventory
“His mom used to help sort and label the food, and she helped with that for a lot of the early years,” recalled Birley. “Since then it’s kind of grown, and so now there’s about five or so people that help to run it.”
Birley said that despite not having a brick and mortar location, noting that it’s the volunteers who store it in their own homes, the Helping Hands Food Bank helps anywhere between three to 11 families per month at any given time of the year.
“Right now we’re helping out 11 families because with winter and Christmas, everything just piles up. We always have more families this time of year than the others; I think this summer we were serving five families consistently but it always changes because people move,” she said. “But when people need food, they just get a hold of us, either through Facebook, Instagram or by phone, and then I pack everything up, and they either come to me for it, or I’ll drop it off to those who don’t or can’t drive. We usually send them off with food or other supplies like toilet paper and dish soap, and a gift card for other groceries if we have enough available–but we usually give those out once a month.”
Birley explained that gift cards are always helpful because they’re able to provide those who need them with full meals or other various needs.
“We don’t stock things like milk, bread, ground meat or other things like that, so that’s where those gift cards really come in handy,” she said.
Acknowledging that food banks in bigger cities are often struggling to keep up with the demand, Birley said she was thankful for her small community and the residents’ dedication to helping where they can.
“We’re so very fortunate because even though it took a lot of years for people to catch on and to get the hang of it, there’s a lot of community support these days. We actually have one lady that comes here about once a month and she’ll bring jugs of laundry detergent, soap or even toilet paper… anything she can find a deal on, really, which is great,” she said. “We also have a lot of businesses that are super helpful and send us cheques and we’re at the point now where people, organizations and schools will call me and say, ‘We did a food drive, where can we drop everything off?’ It’s really gotten to the point where I don’t have to constantly be reaching out anymore or have to try to figure out how we can help people, that part kind of takes care of itself because people are used to it.”
“I mean, we only serve up to about 11 families at our highest, so that’s why we can do so well with what we have, but our community is amazing for stepping in like that,” continued Birley. “There’s times where all we have might just be cans and pasta, so I’ll go online and say, ‘we’re short on this and we could really use this,’ and the stuff starts coming in. Our community has been very good about that and it’s just wonderful that these little towns can really stick together and help each other out.”
When it comes to stocking their inventory, the organizer said that while things like dried pasta, canned soup and beans, or even tuna are helpful, the food bank likes to put lists together to help people think outside of the box.
“At the moment we’re actually pretty stocked up with a good variety of things, but I would never turn food away. With that being said, that’s where our list of ideas tends to come in handy. We probably have hundreds of cans of soup, so the list really helps to get people thinking outside of the box; for example, things like those Knorr Sidekick packages are helpful because then someone can make a full meal with them,” said Birley. “But I typically tell people to just look out for good deals so it’s not costing them a fortune, and I’ll give them ideas like dish soap, laundry detergent or toilet paper because the more we can help cover that kind of stuff, the more people can buy that we can’t supply like a bag of milk.”
Some of the items on the Helping Hands Food Bank list of ideas include:
Grocery items including cooking oil, instant coffee, spices, cereal, rice, pasta and sauce, juice, popcorn, sugar, canned meat, trail mix, tea and canned pasta.
Lunch snacks, such as pudding, applesauce, fruit cups, granola bars, fruit snacks, crackers, pretzels, rice crackers, cookies, raisins, dried fruit, beef jerky, cereal bars, and goldfish.
Condiments, such as ketchup, mustard, relish, bbq sauce, mayonnaise, salad dressing, plum sauce, peanut butter, jam, hazelnut spread, honey, maple syrup and vinegar.
Soaps like dishwasher detergent, dishwasher Rinse Aid, dish soap, hand soap, laundry detergent, stain remover, and cleaning products.
Personal Products like shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash, bandaids, q-tips, kleenex, toilet paper, tooth paste, tooth brushes, mouthwash, sunscreen and bug spray.
For those who are looking to give back, they’re more than welcome to donate with cash, by e-transfer or with gift cards.
The Helping Hands Food Bank currently has seven drop-off locations including: The Princeton library and post office, the Drumbo Esso, the Morrow’s of Drumbo, the Bright Post Office, the Plattsville post office and the Plattsville Library which also has a community library.
Birley and the Township of Blandford-Blenheim are also currently in talks of setting up a permanent storage facility for the food bank at the Drumbo Park canteen.
“It’s been wonderful that people have opened their homes to the food bank, but it will be nice to have a space where we can invite people to come and sort everything,” she said. “Because everything is stored in people’s homes right now, it’s not my place to just invite volunteers there so if it’s set up in a local spot that’s owned by the Township, then I can kind of open it up to more helpers and that way it’s more in a central location for us to get to.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
