Charities that feed hungry urge businesses to pitch in: ‘Seniors are starting’

Several London-area charities are pleading for more participation in the food sharing program Second Harvest as they sound the alarm about the severity of the food insecurity problem, especially among seniors.

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“We have seniors who are starving and embarrassed to ask for food,” said Jayna Leroux-Hendren, who started Seniors in Food Crisis in Oxford County in early 2023 after seeing stories of hungry seniors posted on a social media site.

The charity supports 1,300 members, she said.

Second Harvest is an app that enables food businesses to post surplus food on a website where charitable organizations can make arrangements to distribute the food.

It’s a site that has been on the London Food Bank’s radar for many years.

“Second Harvest has had great connections with different food banks” during the years, said Jane Roy, co-director of the London Food Bank. “It’s really valuable at connecting donors to donations.”

Several charities, including Seniors in Food Crisis, STICH, the Lunch Bunch, and Woodstock’s Southgate Centre, have joined together under the name Food Rescue Feeding Oxford in order to handle larger quantities of food posted on Second Harvest.

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By working together, it makes it easier to divide food up within their groups.

“Second Harvest is where food rescue comes from places like Zehrs and Shoppers Drug Mart. If they have extra food they put it on the app,” Leroux-Hendren said. “For example, there was a listing for 4,800 pounds of bananas. It’s all or nothing. So, by working together, we are able to accept it and then divvy it among us. “

One large Woodstock manufacturing company once donated almost 1,700 bento boxes that fed a number of people in their community, she said.

Another private donor donated the left-over food from a funeral, she said.

The problem lately, she said, is organizations outside the Oxford area are accepting the food and taking it to the Toronto area, she said.

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The food is desperately needed as the housing crisis puts more pressure on those with fixed incomes and medical costs increase, Leroux-Hendren said.

“I get people calling – this has happened more than once – where a woman said, ‘My neighbor has two slices of bread in her house. She is having one for supper and saving the other one for her husband,’” she said. “We want people to be aware people need help, that we need help to fill our fridges and shelves and Second Harvest is a way to do it.”

Bryan Smith runs the STICH supper club that offers a hot sit-down meal every Thursday for almost 200 people of all ages at an Ingersoll church, as well as the Lunch Bunch, a community lunch program for adults and children, during the school year.

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“People are having to choose between shelter and food,” he said. “We’re seeing two-income families coming to STICH moved by the fact you can earn minimum wage and work full time but not possibly survive.”

Leroux-Hendren said she hopes more restaurants, grocery stores and coffee shops sign up to “make sure that food is not being wasted.

“We also ask that when they post it, they can designate it to someone specific or it just goes on the app and the first one that sees it gets it,” she said. “Unfortunately sometimes it means large donations are scooped up and taken to Toronto.”

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