Agape Table puts out urgent plea for donations after “unprecedented” demand for food

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A Winnipeg food bank has issued an urgent plea for donations after an “unprecedented increase in requests for food assistance.”

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Agape Table has tasked itself with providing food security for the city’s most vulnerable for 44 years, and has never seen this sort of demand with a record 4,162 people grabbing a brown-bagged meal last week from in front of the Wave Church on Furby Street.

“We’re not week-to-week; sometimes we’re day-to-day with the actual items for the lunch,” volunteer co-ordinator Aaron Scharff said Tuesday in his basement office. “Just imagine, that’s 4,200 granola bars, that’s 4,200 bottles of water, that’s 4,200 paper bags, that’s 4,200 soup cups with lids, that’s 4,200 sandwiches.

“We’ve been struggling as of late to make sure our guests can have a healthy, stable meal.”

The service is provided on weekdays between 7-11 a.m., though it often stretches later in the day as happened Tuesday.

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Prior to COVID-19, guests would come inside to eat and an extremely busy day would mean up to 400 meals served. The pandemic pushed things outside the front door, with demand swelling to the high 700s a day. That had been fairly consistent for the past three years or so.

“Only in the last three months, we started to see mid-900s. So we’re serving well over 900 meals a day now. It takes an extraordinary amount of food and time to make sure that our guests have food to eat,” Scharff said.

The nonprofit organization is calling for sandwich fillings, fruit, yogurt and granola bars. It also operates a food bank twice a week with 145 registered families and 25 on an emergency walk-in basis, and helps look after basic hygiene and other needs for an ever-expanding clientele.

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“We use the term the working poor. The cost of living has risen so much now. We see people coming on their way to work, they’ll drive by and they’ve got to stop to get a meal. We’ll see immigrant families. If there’s fires from northern Manitoba, we see refugees here. We see everybody,” Scharff said.

A staff of eight salaried employees is offset by about 35-40 volunteers each day.

Scharff doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about how demand could be lessened, only how it can be filled.

“That’s a pretty tough one. All I know is I’m here to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to have a great day. That’s what I’m focusing on is the now. It’s not in the future, it’s not the past, it’s how can I help this individual in real time, today?”

Donations are accepted at 364 Furby Street from 8 a.m.-2 p.m., or by calling 204-783-6369.

Kevin.king@kleinmedia.ca

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