Richmond Food Bank Society

Annual Report for 2007-2008

The dominant event of the past year was our relocation to Cedarbridge Way in August 2007. This space is larger with enough space to allow visiting agencies to provide outreach and services during our distributions and also has adequate space for storage. This a good location: central, close to a number of bus routes, and close to other agencies that serve to low-income and marginalized people. While some long-time users have not followed us here, we are finding that we are serving people with deeper needs including no income, no home, mental illness. The problem of limited parking has been minimized thanks to a neighbouring church. Despite the current active market for trades workers, all our renovation work has been done by skilled volunteers or paid by local contracting firms, and most of the supplies and fittings donated. Plumbing, health, and fire inspections are now complete. This is thanks to long hours and hard work by dedicated regular volunteers and by staff, and volunteers who rallied to clean both locations. We were delighted to be welcomed with visits from neighbours and flowers from Richmond Centre and Pathways Clubhouse. Our Open House in September was well attended by donors, local leaders, and partner agencies. All were impressed by our space, our volunteers, and that once again, we accomplished our move without interrupting service.

People & Programs

We are serving around 300 families every week. In our central and more accessible Cedarbridge location, we are seeing people experiencing deep poverty – many who did not have the means or ability to travel to our Steveston location. The volunteers at Peace Church chose to continue our Daniels Depot, providing an accessible location for East Richmond.

Nutritious Recipes Demonstrations have become regular features during distributions at Cedarbridge and Daniels locations, under the guidance of food security educator and activist, Arzeena Hamir. Arzeena coordinates our demonstrations with seasonal foods available from the Sharing Farm and has recruited a client to conduct the demonstrations at Daniels Road on a contract basis, while demos at Cedarbridge are conducted by a member of Pathways, through its Transitional Employment Program. Arzeena enhances our program and builds capacity among our clients with seasonal container food planting workshops during distributions.

Our “Feed the body, Feed the mind” nutrition and literacy program is even more successful in our new, and bright Story Time corner. We have a regular duo of Story time volunteers and librarians from the Brighouse Branch step in when the volunteers are not available. Healthy snacks and books are provided by cash and in kind donations from the Tzu Chi Foundation, CUPE Richmond Library workers, Westwind School Lend a Hand Club, Black Bond Books, the Dream Auction, and Success by 6 funding through United Way.

In January, we began our Friends of Children Dairy Program that gives fresh milk, cheese, or eggs each week to families with children and nursing mothers. Our new cooler, paid for by the Richmond Chinatown Lions Club, is integral to our Dairy Program.  It has cargo doors that allow us to store product that is received on pallets, without having to load and unload by hand – critical to the safety and well-being of our volunteer and paid staff.

A grant from the Dr Bud Sipko Memorial Fund (administered by the Richmond Community Foundation) pays for Dental Grab bags that are distributed in advance of periodic oral hygiene clinics and fluoride treatments for preschool children, conducted by dental hygienist Lisa Enns, of Richmond Health Services.

Partners

We continue to look for ways to better serve our community by providing quality food, a supportive environment for people needing food help, for our volunteers, and for donors. We are pleased that our hopes have come true: this location has enabled us to take people to the agencies that can help address more of their needs. We invite community partners to provide information and service at the food bank during distributions – these include settlement workers from SUCCESS, Richmond Youth Soccer Association’s Anyone Can Play free soccer registration, Richmond Public Library outreach, Richmond Health Department flu inoculations and dental clinics. Richmond Children First is considering a parents coffee corner during RFB distributions.  A representative from Richmond School District provides information on education options and Richmond Addictions Services is considering ways to partner for the benefit of people with multi-barriers whose complex needs are not addressed in the current compartmentalized health care system. There is hope that a current review, which we have been invited to participate in, will succeed in providing an effective continuum of care for people affected by persistent illness, substance dependencies, or age.

To serve people who cannot overcome barriers to using the food bank, such as travel and stigma, we make food available through other agencies. These include community meals at St Alban’s, Gilmore Park, and Salvation Army Community Church, and cooking clubs sponsored by Family Services of Greater Vancouver. Richmond Family Place has resumed its relationship with us wherein the RFB provides food for a cupboard at their site, and Family Place provides a parents information table monthly at the food bank.

Fundraising & Support

CANstruction raised about $10,000 worth of nutritiously-high quality food. But, after six years, the team is flagging and is willing to hand over the project to another group. But, the Richmond team is looking for another imaginative way to raise funds and awareness for the food bank. The Gilmore Park Dream Auction continues to be a huge source of support for organizations that help children in Richmond. We allocated the $13,000 RFB portion to our nutrition & literacy and dairy programs. ANAF Unit 284 gave us $6,500 – for the 25^th time. WorksafeBC’s Christmas and Christmas in July campaigns are significant fundraisers, having adjusted their giving from food to cash. As well as regular volunteer help on our distribution days and help with the CANstruction project, the Tzu Chi Foundation now also distributes generous Winter Relief packages late in the fall and made a generous cash donation to our “Feed the body, Feed the mind” program.. The Milan & Maureen Ilich Foundation made an unexpected but timely gift of a brand new van  – we received the good news phone call just after our old van had failed us mid-route, right before Christmas. And in March, the Richmond Chinatown Lions Club organized a fabulous Cool-Aid gala for the Richmond Food Bank, tapping into the Asian business community to raise funds for our cooler, renovation expenses, and to buy food.

Volunteers

The Richmond Food Bank is a popular venue for volunteer engagement. At our 2008 volunteer appreciation party we were able to celebrate Jack Pearson’s service with us for 25 years as well as 25 years of financial support from the Army Navy & Airforce Veterans 284. The volunteers at Peace Church and especially the key volunteers who plan and coordinate the weekly distributions there are admirable for maintaining consistency and reliability with minimal supervision from “head office”. Our volunteer corps has a wide range of abilities, despite some having developmental disabilities and others physical or mental health issues. We are fortunate to also have many seasonal volunteers, including the12th Service Battalion and CUPE school bus drivers once again gave significant help to collect, sort, and store the bounty of food and cash collected during Christmas schools food drives. Our volunteers were recognized as the Richmond Food Bank was named finalist for the Richmond Chamber of Commerce "Association of the Year" category – the winners being our friends, the Army Navy & Airforce Veterans at Unit 284. We were pleased to see the Richmond Food Bank named by Mayor Brodie as Richmond’s “Best Volunteers” along with Pathways Clubhouse – for their extraordinary dedication and commitment to helping others in need.

Board

Our Board of Directors has evolved into a good mix of long-serving members who provide stability and knowledge of the RFB’s history, and new members with fresh ideas and approaches and new contacts in the community. Ed Montague is a founding Director in his 15^th year of service as a Director; another founding Director, Chris Morris resigned to pursue new interests, but remains available for public relations service and on-call wherever needed. The Future Planning Committee has disbanded, as future planning is recognized as an ongoing responsibility of the Board as a whole. The Recruiting Committee is working on building diversity among the Directors to better represent and connect with our community. The Finance Committee has built a good working relationship with our auditors at Reid Hurst Nagy and is making plans to bring bookkeeping services in-house, as our long-serving volunteer bookkeeper, Betty Dharmasetia, would like to retire. The Board was energized in the spring by a Volunteer Vancouver governance workshop conducted by Joanna Whalley, who accepted an invitation to conduct a follow-up strategic planning workshop which was held in May.

Staff

Our paid staff has expanded and reorganized to include Alex Nixon as Coordinator of Volunteers and Operations. This position is designed to provide support to our volunteers who have been sadly neglected while all efforts were directed to maintaining service while coordinating our relocation. Judy Ying Sun worked alongside the volunteers as much as possible, as well as performing administrative tasks. Judy’s role will be to concentrate more fully on receipting and bookkeeping. Rick Younie has worked long and hard to accomplish the physical move and renovations, while coordinating dispatch and receiving, maintaining vehicles and equipment, performing IT tasks, and keeping our website up to date. Polly Ng worked with us for several months as Nutritious Recipes Coordinator and also as Volunteers Coordinator to help us manage our move, and prepared thoughtful and useful documents for our “Volunteer Program”. Rick Humber, from Pathways Clubhouse, has provided excellent daily janitorial service through his nine-month employment program and we look forward to working with his successors. Changes in staffing will allow Margaret Hewlett to concentrate on planning, board support, communications and public relations, and community liaison. The Board of Director’s commitment to supporting education and training for employed and volunteer staff has helped all to develop their knowledge and leadership skills.

Memberships

Memberships in community groups help the RFB to build connections, raise its profile, and help the people we serve to connect with agencies and services that can help them overcome the underlying reasons for their poverty. Memberships include the Richmond Community Services Advisory Council, Richmond Chamber of Commerce, the Richmond Women’s Resource Centre, Volunteer Canada, Volunteer Vancouver, Volunteer Richmond, the Canadian Association of Food Banks, and the Richmond Poverty Response Committee. We continue to serve as the administering agency for this committee of agencies and individuals who identify gaps in services and work towards finding ways to alleviate the effects of poverty. This year the PRC launched its own web-site with funding from the Vancity Foundation, and hosted a successful dialogue on food security, called “Food for All” with funds from Vancouver Coastal Health. A pocket market (tiny, portable produce markets) pilot project funded by the Enterprising Non-profits will help to reach people whose barriers to nutritious food include inadequate income and transportation. Richmond’s inadequate stock of affordable housing is being persistently publicized through a variety of activities by the Affordable Housing Task Force. And goods and services for low-income people are made available through the Richmond Shares website and the Low Income Resource Directory.

Future Planning

The 130% increase in 2008 property assessments in the area surrounding the Olympic Oval are reflected in taxes and an unexpected radical increase in occupancy costs. CMHA – Pathways Clubhouse, our neighbours around the corner on Elmbridge Way, are experiencing similar increases and concerns about the future viability of this location. Both agencies have four years remaining in their current leases. The Board of Directors at Pathways Clubhouse invited the Richmond Food Bank to join them in a co-location project, in which we and other compatible organizations would share space in a neighbours relationship. Directors, Executive Directors, and key staff from both organizations are engaged in developing a vision and strategy to find partners, a building or land, and funding to realize a vision for long-term tenancy in a central and accessible location with good public transit service. To date, we have a descriptive document and Powerpoint presentation and have made contacts with potential partners and supporters.

Thanks

All the above accomplishments and the effectiveness of our service is due to the dedication and hard work of our 125 regular volunteers, the many volunteers who help seasonally and on off-site activities, our Board of Directors, our staff, and our many donors and supporters in the community.