These Are The Faces of Hunger In Kelowna

“On average, the Central Okanagan Food Bank serves 4,000 individuals per month: one-third of those clients are children, 10 per cent are seniors, and over 20 per cent of households report employment as their primary source of income," said Lanetta Parry, Executive Director of the Central Okanagan Community Food Bank.

In light of Hunger Awareness Week, food banks across the country will be highlighting the issue of food insecurity in Canada.

Impacting families and individuals throughout the nation, hunger has many different faces, and yet the struggles and the stories behind these faces are so often pushed to the side in favour of a less bothersome reality.

“Canadians are obsessed with talking about the food we’re cooking and the meals we’re having. We discuss the restaurants we’re going to or want to visit with wild excitement. We photograph our food and share it on social media channels. Trending hashtags like #foodie, #nomnomnom, and #yummy are common in our food-crazed lives,” said Parry.

A more dismal reality is this: food bank use across the country has increased by 25 per cent over the last seven years. In 2014, food banks throughout Canada serviced over 840,000 individuals, with about 97,000 people receiving assistance in British Columbia. Lastly, the food bank right here in our community experienced a four per cent increase last year alone.

In an effort to shed some light on the overwhelming number of Canadians who have or are currently experiencing food insecurity, the Central Okanagan Food Bank is calling on residents to take a moment to think about food from a different perspective—the perspective belonging to the thousands of faces in Kelowna who use the food bank.

“Hunger is an issue many Canadians are not comfortable talking about,” said Parry. “We are going to interrupt the food conservation so that the voice of hunger can be considered. Let’s give hunger a chance to be heard as loudly as the foodie movement this Hunger Awareness Week.”

KelownaNow.com will run a week-long series in conjunction with Hunger Awareness Week, as a means of highlighting the impact that food insecurity has on our own community.

Beginning on Tuesday, KelownaNow.com will publish an article outlining the importance of food security, as well as the detrimental effects of not having access to nutritious food.

Moving forward, KelownaNow.com will tell the stories of several individuals that live right here in Kelowna, all of whom have or still do struggle with food insecurity.

These stories will allow seniors, mothers, working-class adults, families, students, and recent graduates to draw the curtain back on the ugly truth: that food insecurity is a much more common and pressing issue in our community than we might think.

In the meantime, click on the following links if you would like more information on the Central Okanagan Community Food Bank or the 2014 Hunger Report.