Food-security organizations in the Cowichan Valley say they’ve never been busier and face growing pressure to expand.
Nourish Cowichan and the Cowichan Valley Basket Society, which receive funds from the Times 91原创 Christmas Fund through a partnership with the Sovereign Order of St. John, say they are seeing more need than ever for their services.
Nourish was founded in 2016 by Fatima Da Silva, Dina Holbrook and Anita Carroll as a breakfast program in one school but quickly expanded.
It’s now feeding 3,000 students each day and sending home 550 grocery bags on weekends, said Da Silva, who was given a lifetime achievement award by the Duncan Cowichan Chamber of Commerce and a King Charles III Coronation Medal this year for her work.
During the 2023-24 school year, Nourish provided about 720,000 meals at 23 schools in the Cowichan Valley School District.
The need over the years surprised many, said Rod Allen, president of Nourish Cowichan and a former school superintendent.
“It’s sort of one of those things that once you start looking, you start finding,” he said. “And that’s no different than any other school district. We just had Fatima and her insistence that we look. As we started digging, we saw the size of the issue.”
Many families are living “closer to the bone,” with financial difficulties exacerbated by the pace of inflation and the cost of housing in the Cowichan Valley, Allen said.
“The struggle is getting worse and worse,” he said, which also has an impact on the donation side. “Families now have less to donate.”
The organization, which has a budget of about $1.5 million, a team of more than 70 volunteers and a handful of professional chefs and staff, is driven by cash donations, though it receives some grant money from governments and funders like the Times 91原创 Christmas Fund.
It also gets donations from local farmers and gardeners, and grows produce on donated land cultivated by a small army of volunteer farmers.
The food is made in a commercial kitchen in a former high school metalwork shop, and frozen or stored on site before it is taken to the schools to be heated.
Allen said there’s a reason it’s called Nourish Cowichan and not Feed Cowichan.
“The food is fresh, it’s homemade and made from scratch and just amazing stuff,” he said. “And so the kids are getting really nourishing meals. It’s not just to fill their bellies, it’s filling them with high-quality, good nourishing food.”
He said the effect on students is immediate. “It’s not just an increased ability to learn, it’s also behavioural — hungry kids struggle in all kinds of ways,” he said.
Any child who wants food gets it, said Allen. “We want it really to be stigma-free. We just feed kids.”
At the Cowichan Valley Basket Society, manager Henry Wikkerink said they’re seeing more people than ever, and a third are under 19.
He said housing costs in the valley have soared, which eats up a lot of monthly income. “We see lots of families coming in that are double-income families. They’re not being able to make it on the wages that they’re getting paid,” he said, adding demand has grown 100 per cent in the last year and a half.
“Certainly we’re buying a lot more food now than we ever have.”
The society said it handed out 4,804 hampers in 2023 and served 56,900 meals in its dining room.
It began its work in 1988, bringing together individuals, service clubs and churches to address food insecurity. It now owns its facility and a neighbouring lot on Garden Street in Duncan.
The society hopes to raise $1 million to expand what used to be a single-family home and add a storage warehouse. The group has far outgrown the space and stores food where it can on site, including in shipping containers.
About 10 per cent of the fundraising goal has been raised so far.
Wikkerink said the food bank was forced to run a small deficit last fiscal year. “We had some reserves, so we’ve been able to use that, but definitely we’re headed to the point now where we are struggling to meet the needs,” he said, noting food donations are down overall, while cash donations have ticked up a bit.
Cash is preferred, as the food bank can then negotiate its best deal on food with grocery stores and other producers.
The society is supported by an army of about 100 volunteers each month, but even those ranks are challenged these days.
“We all wish we could close down and not do what we’re doing, but the realistic story is this isn’t going away very soon,” Wikkerink said.
HOW TO DONATE TO THE CHRISTMAS FUND
• Go online to . That page is linked to CanadaHelps, which is open 24 hours a day and provides an immediate tax receipt.
• Use your credit card by phoning 250-995-4438 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday.
• Cheques should be made out to the Times 91原创 Christmas Fund. Drop them at the Times 91原创 office in Vic West, 201-655 Tyee Road, Victoria.
• Or, for the duration of the postal strike, contact Maximum Express for free pickup and delivery of your cheque. Call dispatch at 250-721-3278 or email [email protected].
