London food bank’s Thanksgiving drive to focus on needs of children

The London Food Bank is focusing this year’s Thanksgiving Food Drive on children amid signs more youth need help.

Article content

“More and more kids are falling into food insecurity and that’s a major concern for us. We’re starting to see more kids coming to us for more help,” co-director Glen Pearson said.

Recent statistics show “a creep” in the demand among children and youth from the food bank and other organizations, he said.

“There’s this creep, where there are more and more groups having to help more and more youth,” Pearson said.

During the first nine months of 2024, there’s been a 13.8 per cent increase in the number of children in the families seeking food, compared to the same period last year, according to the food bank.

During the first nine months of this year, the food bank has served 14,649 individual children, co-director Jane Roy said.

Article content

It’s still too early to see a trend, Roy said, but a Unicef ​​report card on Canada a year ago suggested child poverty in Canada, once on the decline, was rising again.

Children have the highest rate of food insecurity among all age groups in Canada, 24 per cent in 2022 or 1.8 million individuals, the report said.

That was an increase from 1.4 million children in 2021, the report said.

Food insecurity is defined as lacking regular access to safe, nutritious food.

“Because food insecurity grew incrementally over the years, we’ve kind of accepted it. But when it comes to our kids, we just can’t,” Pearson said.

It’s not clear why the food bank is seeing more children, but Pearson said higher rents and higher grocery bills, as well as low-paying, precarious work continues to hurt families.

Article content

London’s food bank repeatedly set records for demand in 2023, with the number of families needing help topping 6,000 a month by the end of the year.

Just last month, a network of food banks announced the number of Ontarians who visited a food bank in the past year topped one million for the first time.

This year’s Thanksgiving food drive runs Oct. 4 to 14. Representatives of youth organizations are expected to speak at a news conference Thursday to launch this year’s drive.

[email protected]

Article content