Barrhaven Food Cupboard makes urgent plea for more funds

The Barrhaven Food Cupboard is in urgent need of help from the community.

The food cupboard, located on the lower level of the Walter Baker Centre, has put up an appeal on its website, looking for donations.

“Without additional resources, the food cupboard will run out of money by the end of the year. We served double the number of families in May, food costs have skyrocketed, and our savings are running out. Can you help?”

According to the food cupboard, they need to raise $180,000 or risk scaling back or even closing. This comes at a time when the demand for their services in the community is at an all-time high. They issued their fundraising campaign June 30.

“We may have to consider, ‘Is this sustainable, and could we have to close? And that’s really hard to say, because there’s such a need here that we want to remain open,” said Matthew Triemstra, Director of Communications, in an interview with CTV Ottawa.

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase. We are serving on average 50 per cent more clients now than we were a year ago, and that’s made our operations almost unsustainable.

“Last month, we served over 1,500 people, which is about 400 families.”

The Barrhaven Food Cupboard has expanded and grown with the community for the past two decades. From its humble beginnings in the basement of the Barrhaven United Church, the food bank grew thanks to the leadership of original Barrhaven BIA Chair and Your Independent Grocer owner and founder

Ken Ross. Councillor Jan Harder also played a significant role in the growth and expansion of the food cupboard over the years. It was Harder who successfully lobbied for the organization to move into its new location, which is located next to where Harder’s constituency office was.

Since moving into its new location, the population of Barrhaven has doubled, as it now over 100,000 people. The demand for the food cupboard’s services has grown with the population. Compounding the problem for the food cupboard is that food prices have skyrocketed. While the Barrhaven Food Cupboard once spent $10,000 in a month, they now require $40,000 per month to meet the demands they now have.

“Barrhaven has always been generous,” Treimstra told

CTV Ottawa. “We’ve needed food, food has come in and we’ve given food back out, but we are 100 per cent independent, we are 100 per cent volunteer-run, and we’re 100 per cent reliant on donations. So, this moment in time, in which demand has sky-rocketed and the cost of everything has gone up, has meant that we have had to re-evaluate our sources of revenue, and for the first time we’ve kind of launched a fundraising appeal.”

To donate to the Barrhaven Food Cupboard, visit www. barrhavenfoodcupboard.ca.