Richmond Food Bank Society

Annual Report for 2009-2010

 

Our past year began with volunteers and staff participating in the annual July 1^st Canada Day Parade in Steveston, where the crowd’s applause suggests widespread support for our organization and volunteers. We celebrated our volunteers in June and Ernie’s lovely garden once again, enjoying a barbecue lunch prepared by the Tsawwassen Lions Club and music by our long-time volunteer musicians Arlene, Kevin, and Simon.

 

Autumn was busy, as usual: every year we participate in our local World Food Day celebration and Fair Trade Fair, putting up our display board, giving information, and making connections with other community groups. Our annual Volunteers pot-luck lunch in November featured an information presentation from the Office to Combat Human Trafficking to inform us of appropriate responses if we should recognize people at risk among our clients. Also in November, Directors and staff participated in our annual Planning Session, this year focused on Vision and Values, and facilitated by Joanna Whalley. The month ended with several Directors volunteering, attending, and spending at the Gilmore Park Dream Auction which raised $39.000 and gave $12,500 to the RFB. The Richmond Food Bank Society has received $79,000 since 2003 from the Dream Auction to purchase snack packs and dairy foods for children.

 

December brought the annual joys and challenges of receiving and redistributing the bounty of donations given by individuals, businesses, schools, and other community groups. This year brought the added challenge of Christmas coinciding with Olympic preparations throughout the City. Although the 12^th Service Battalion could not provide trucks or sorting space as they have for many years, other businesses stepped in generously with temporary space and a loaned van. As always, our volunteers willingly worked hard and long to ensure timely collections. We believe our organization’s responsiveness is significant in securing continuing support from our donors. This includes timely personal telephone calls by Directors to thank donors for their support.

 

The combination of Olympics and the Haiti disaster impacted us through February. Several of our volunteers were fully engaged as Olympics volunteers, and some of our Tzu Chi volunteers responded to the Haiti crisis with on site work. Our donors also seemed to be preoccupied with Olympic activities. Fortunately, we were able to maintain distributions, which remained busy.

 

Donations are back on track since March, which began with impressive food donations from the Holland Heineken House, followed by the Richmond Youth Concert Band’s fundraising Gala and the Richmond Evangelical Churches joint Good Friday service, both of which each year raise significant funds for the food bank.

 

We celebrate our volunteers every year soon after the Christmas rush, this year with a pub night that featured music by volunteer Mark Ash and his colleagues from Pathways Clubhouse. To protect all people and aspects of our organization, other annual activities include our audit, tax filing, and general liability and Directors and Officers insurance renewals.

 

The people we serve are experiencing lingering effects of the recession including layoffs since the close of the Olympics. In an average week this year we are serving 479 households, compared with 307 before this recession began; the weekly high being 534. The previous highest average was 375 in 2003-2004, and the busiest week 480 - before the boon of construction and pre-Olympic activity. Mental illnesses and anxiety have contributed to some aggressive behaviours which, thanks to quick and judicious interventions, were contained without injury. CMHA-Pathways Clubhouse staff has helped us to cope with some troublesome clients and Cst Rempel, who is the RCMP Mental Health Coordinator and on the Pathways Clubhouse Board of Directors, has given two tea-time mental illness awareness workshops for our distribution volunteers. She will be making periodic visits in uniform to build relationships and a sense of security and trust for clients and volunteers. A friendly neighbour has remarked on the importance of our proximity to the RCMP, providing a sense of security to people at and around the food bank.

 

Visiting agencies and partners provide vital community contacts for people whose connection to the community is primarily their visits to the food bank. CUPE librarians donate children’s books and conduct our spring and fall “Feed the body, Feed the mind” distributions of age-appropriate books, as well as a monthly mobile lending library at both the Daniels and Cedarbridge locations.

 

A ladies group of the BC Muslim Association sets up a table monthly to distribute donations they have made which are suitable for Muslim diets but available to anyone, build connections and trust within our community.

 

We are once again a community engagement site for third and fourth year nursing students – now from Langara University. The students work on projects that provide service to us and learning for them, such as client needs surveys and wellness workshops.

 

We continue to enjoy a good neighbourly relationship with CMHA-Pathways Clubhouse. A significant number of Pathways members are food bank clients and several also volunteer with us. As a Transitional Employment site, we benefit from having our floors and bathrooms consistently cleaned and the Pathways TE members get work experience for fair wages at a job that is unattractive to volunteers.

 

The Food Security Society promotes food self-sufficiency by conducting container planting workshops at the food bank, while the Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Project continues to grow and harvest vegetables for us with the help of community groups such as Pathways Clubhouse and the Tzu Chi Foundation. Since last summer, Tzu Chi volunteers have taken on the bulk of tending and harvesting the vegetables that Dave Harrison plants for us at Mylora Gardens.

 

Richmond Soccer has run The Everyone Can Play Soccer program for food bank client families since 2006, addressing financial barriers to the health and social benefits of organized sport. For the spring 2010 season, 52 girls and boys registered, including 26 new players and 26 returning players. Some of the first players are still in the program and at least one has gone on to become a premier player.   

 

Thanks to our service volunteers and Directors, staff, and our many donors and supporters, we are able to provide reliable and ample grocery help despite deep and widespread hardships and increasing demands for charitable giving. We work hard to maintain our community’s confidence and support and to developing more partnerships.

 

 As we look ahead, we are actively exploring options to serve our clients most effectively when our lease term ends in 2012.