Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
| Hamilton Food Share :: Wesley Gozdek – West Hamilton Fortinos :: Isabel Sardella – Neighbour to Neighbour :: Toskan Casale Foundation :: Hamilton Community Foundation :: Geraldos at Lasalle :: Little Caesars :: Mission Services Hamilton :: Meeting House Hamilton :: Marshal Memorial Church :: Burlington Alliance Church :: St. Johns Lutheran Church :: and all the other churches and groups that donate! |
The Living Rock Food bank is the only youth based food bank in all of Hamilton and is the first point of contact for many youth and their families. As part of our mission in the food bank, we not only meet the needs of youth surrounding food and clothing, we get to know them so that we may connect them to the other services available to them. This is the beginning of what turns into a long and fruitful relationship that maximizes the potential for supporting youth-at-risk. The goal of the Food Bank is to build relationships and to connect youth to recreation/skill building, adult literacy, Wellness Works programs for pregnant and parenting youth as well as our ‘stay in school’ programming. Through our youth employment preparedness program and work with our community partners, we provide educational assessments and supports to address the reduction of poverty via building skills, reducing barriers and building assets for youth.
The food bank continues to go through changes as we are striving to increase the variety and nutritional value of foods available to include more breads and pastries, vegetables, as well as our once a month specials. We try to continually offer cultural foods such as rice, flour and dried lentils for new Canadians. Recently, our food bank database has greatly improved due to a switch to using HIFIS (Homeless Individuals and Family Information System) to track statistics. HIFIS is being implemented in all of the food banks in Hamilton to get a better sense of the demographics and needs of those using the food bank system.
2008 Statistics
Average # of shoppers per month |
|
170 |
# of pounds donated per month |
|
2979 |
# of children benefiting from Food Bank services per month |
|
145 |
# of adults benefiting from Food Bank services per month |
|
587 |
“ I depend on food banks from the 1st to the 15th and my daughter is going to food banks. She is going to the Rock [Living Rock Ministries] every day and gets breakfast; she gets bus tickets; she gets a meal. You know it’s kind of ridiculous for a teenager to be going to a food bank for her mother and for her family…I am getting nervous, sorry” (Page 24 in the report of the Homelessness Initiative Campaign for Adequate Welfare (HICFAW) In partnership with Social Planning research council of Hamilton, Sept 2003) |