A Food Bank in London has expanded to a larger location to better serve a growing number of people who need food, essential items and job support.
Halal Food Bank Canada has been helping to provide halla -based ingredients and non -perishable food to Londoners since 2019, but demand has increased significantly in recent years due to services that extend beyond food, said President and Founder Amna Salem.
“The number of customers at this time is approximately 1,200. That is approximately 400 families,” he said. “It is mainly the income that makes it horrible and difficult for many families to survive.”
“We are also offering many other services to newly arrived families as clothes and essential elements so that they can stand on their own feet. We want to have workshops to train them for jobs and resume construction, so a much larger place was necessary.”
The Food Bank now moved from its former house in Wonderland Road to Mall Oxbury in East London. Although Halal options mainly serve the Muslim community, Salem emphasized that the Food Bank is open to all.
“Hunger does not see religious limits, but there are families that depend specifically on Halal, so we wanted to make sure they obtain culturally appropriate foods without worrying,” he added.
In the six years that this work has been doing, Salem has noticed a drastic increase in people who resort to food banks, especially from the Covid pandemic. An average of three to four families is recorded as their customers daily, with at least 300 families on a waiting list, he said.
The Director of Dissemination of the Food Bank, Dr. Munir El-Kassem, as the population of London grows in the midst of a housing and affordability crisis, more services like this are needed to keep up with the need.
“I have been here in Canada for 49 years and when I first arrived, all London at that time was 170,000 people, now it is about half a million. And with the increase in numbers, the exponential increase in needy families is at a level that we really need to match,” he said.
The beneficial organization assumes registered customers for a period of one year, where they provide job assistance and other support for newcomers to Canada. Your admission process includes an exhaustive interview to obtain more information about your family, work and financial situation, and analyze documents such as payment pieces and rent to better understand the help you need.
The objective is to dismiss people from the services of the Food Bank Halal and accept more families in the waiting list, said El-Kassem, a retired dental surgeon and IMAM in the Islamic center of the southwest of Ontario.
Kai Meloche, 23, began using Halal Food Bank earlier this year when he was unemployed and is now one of his volunteers. She said it has been extremely useful at a time when finance is tight.
“It has been a great change for me to be able to budget.
“I live alone, unlike many others who can live with family members or have more services. Many people come [to Canada] Alone, be it a student or a family, so it is definitely difficult to establish. “
He spends his days packing articles such as rice, chickpeas, lentils and others in client bags and adjust food amounts so that they fit the number of people in a family.
Both Meloche and Salem have seen the difference that Halal Food Bank has made first hand to relieve the stress that people are experiencing.
“It is given mental relief of some families because if you don’t have to worry about food, you can do better job searches and focus on establishing themselves,” said Salem.
