Demands exceeding current supplies
The University of Ottawa Students’ Union-Ottawa (UOSU) Food Bank (run in partnership with the Ottawa Food Bank) has been experiencing shortages and increasingly more demands than are able to be met.
On August 21st, the Ottawa Food Bank announced that it is low on food, and was forced to send away scheduled volunteers.
The UOSU Food Cupboad has been facing similar challenges, experiencing a surplus of demands this past year too large to be met with their current capacity and supply rate. Compared to 2022-2023, they have had a “258 [per cent] increase” in students accessing their service.
Abraham Tabo, the UOSU Food Bank coordinator, commented on the current situation.
“we have way more students coming to… the food bank than the food… we had available… the past year, we’ve had to like adjust[:] up our budgets…[and] up our storage capacity to be able to… meet this increasing demand of grocery items.”
Joyce Williams, the UOSU equity commissioner, spoke more on why this was happening. “the food bank was receiving a lot of traffic, and the food was running out very quickly, which to us meant that they weren’t getting enough supplies in time.”
The inability to meet the current needs has led students to take proactive efforts at the cost of their time. “[When we open on Monday at 11 am], we already have a huge line of students waiting for us,” Tabo continued, “some of them tell us that they’ve been here since 9 am… a lot of them have classes right after so just the waiting time for them is really not favorable.”
In response, Williams and Tabo relayed some of the effective measures recently added, as well as some potential additions still in the planning stages.
To begin, the bank has received an increased budget. “last fall, we were solely reliant on the Ottawa food banks delivered so they’re every week, they give us a good amount of food on Fridays. And so we were only reliant on their donations, but now we’ve also received a budget from the university. So it’s a considerable amount, which will help us with our second deliveries on Wednesdays.” Tabo commented.
Second, they are trying to make the system more efficient. Williams shared: “We [UOSU] were in talks with Abraham about possibly potentially making part of the food bank, food collection system automated, basically kind of like how it worked back during COVID, where it was optional at the time, but you would have to pick the products that you wanted through the food bank website, and then that get your order and pack your stuff. So by the time you get to the food bank, all your food is ready. And that could pick up and go rather than lining up because the lines tend to be very long to access the food bank, especially when fresh produce comes in. So I think it’d be a great idea we’ll still need to workshop it.”
There are efforts being made to support students. “a lot of students on campus don’t know that there is a food bank here to help them,” Tabo continued, “[We’re trying to] let as many students know about the food bank so we can help them as best as we can.”
The UOSU Food Bank was open as of Sept 19.
