Voice

Food Drives

On behalf of our food bank, our volunteers and our clients, we thank all the individuals and organizations that registered to run food drives for us. Several organizations had organized a generous food drives to support our clients: Staples Advantage, Chrysler Financial, Pepsi, Buchanan Associates, PRG Schultz Courtneypark, Hatch, St. Valentine School, HP, St. Philopateer Christian School, and Leon’s.

More organizations are still collecting food for us: including Best Buy Heartland, BMO- Courtneypark, Mississauga Academy of Music, Cash Money, Evergreen, Village Orthodontist, Falling Brook Middle School, Rick Hanson Secondary School, and Office of MPP Peter Fonsica.

Corporate Volunteering

We were pleased to receive the support of different businesses in our community who expressed a great interest in donating their time to support a noble cause. During this past quarter we enjoyed working with large number of employees from Staples Advantage, Pepsi, and OME Group. We all worked hard together to support our community, and it was fun.

Welcome

Welcome to St. Mary’s Food Bank’s first issue of our quarterly newsletter “SMFB Voice”.

St. Mary’s Food Bank came a long way over the past four years of serving our community in Mississauga. We opened our door to serve food for the families in need since May 2005 with a mission to reduce hunger and fight poverty. Today the food bank is serving over 12000 people every year. This number continued to grow over the past 5 months by approximately 25 new families every month due to different factors including the economic downturn, layoffs, and immigration to Canada.

With a 17% of its residence living in poverty, Mississauga has the highest level of poverty. 47% of our food bank clients are children, and 27% of our adult clients go hungry at least once a month. St. Mary’s Food Bank receives NO municipal, provincial or federal government funding. We completely rely on donations from the individuals and business in our community.

This year is a different year for us as we have decided to expand our services not only to provide food and help those who cannot help themselves, but also to provide a variety of social services and help people to help themselves.

Now is the time for every individual and every business in the community to partner with us and play an active role in reducing hunger and fighting poverty. Remember “Caring is Sharing”, and we are here to serve such a noble cause. Together we will make a difference.

Feedback from our corporate volunteers

Thank you for allowing us to spend time at St. Mary's Food bank and learn about the good work your organization does. The team building events were good, and the volunteer work was fun too. (Corporate Volunteer)

I truly enjoyed our experience at St. Mary's Food Bank yesterday. The team building exercises were great ... Also, taking the time to put the pasta into the bags was a great experience as it allowed us to work cohesively for a good cause… this was a great activity to do with the colleagues to get to know them on a personal level at the same time.

(Corporate Volunteer)..

"I thought it was great, and it was fun doing something that helped others in my community"

(Corporate Volunteer