Barrie Food Bank raises $150,000 with Spring Campaign, short of target
With the start of a new month comes the end of the Barrie Food Bank's spring campaign, which aimed to raise $250,000 and 100,000 pounds of food.
"We did well on the food side. We ended up with about 140,000 pounds of food. On the financial side, we were a little lighter than we had hoped at $150,000," shared the Barrie Food Bank's executive director Sharon Palmer.
Palmer said the food bank has consistently been seeing around 7,000 clients per month, but those numbers have recently levelled off.
"It's always dependent on the economy and what's happening on a broader perspective. With inflation coming down a little bit in the last month or so, that's a good sign," she noted.
The Sharing Place in Orillia reported a similar trend.
"We're seeing about a 30 to 40 per cent increase year over year. [The] last few months, it started to plateau", said Chris Peacock, The Sharing Place executive director.
Peacock currently assists around 2,200 individuals monthly, with an exceptionally high demand over the Easter weekend.
"Holiday seasons like Easter... the demand for our services increase," he said. "Anytime there's any increase to household budget. If people want to host individuals over for a holiday meal, it means that they have to find food, find money they didn't have planned."
- Download the CTV News app to get local alerts on your device
- Get the latest local updates sent to your email inbox
The Sharing Place and Barrie Food Bank consistently see a significant increase in first-time clients.
"Definitely, more seniors in our community are coming to access the sharing place, which is wonderful to see those individuals ask for support and help. Definitely families, individuals, single moms, and single dads," said Peacock.
"The main thing we would like to see is the financial donations because that allows us to buy the milk, the meat, the dairy. Those are the items we don't get donations for," explained Palmer.
The Barrie Food Bank's next campaign is the Home Runs for the Hungry fundraiser on May 4. The goal is to raise $30,000. Tickets for the event are available online.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
OPP's mandatory alcohol screening during traffic stops 'not acceptable': CCLA
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Maple Leafs down Bruins 2-1 to force Game 7
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.