Impact Report 2019-20 - Feed Ontario

Feed Ontario Impact Report 2019-20

Together in 2019-20 we...

Delivered over

meals to food banks across Ontario

Helped

people across Ontario put food on the table

Supported

visits to a food bank in Ontario

Served

organizations fighting hunger in our communities

Invested

in innovative local programs and the network

Sent over

postcards advocating for changes to social assistance

Delivering more impact to communities in need

A Message from Our Executive Director

"When I think of the past year, the word that comes to mind is “more."

Read the full message

Thank you so much to everyone who joined with us to Feed Ontario this year – we couldn’t have done it without your support!

When I think of the past year, the word that comes to mind is “more.” More people in our province relied on a food bank to help make ends meet; 522,000 people made 3.2 million visits to a food bank in our network. This is a sobering reality. But thankfully, it’s not the only reason I think of “more” when reflecting on this past year.

With your generous support, we were also able to do more to help our province’s most vulnerable. We delivered more meals and more fresh food, more food banks participated in food transformation programs, and we were able to provide more research and analysis on food bank usage to advocate for more long-term solutions to hunger and poverty.

And, just as we were wrapping up an incredible year of impact, we were all asked to give even more as, in the last few weeks of our financial year, the province called a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While this caught our organization and the world by surprise, Feed Ontario quickly developed an innovative program to provide more support to food banks as they responded to a surge in use and the additional challenges of the pandemic.

The daunting adjustment to our new normal in the last few months makes the successes and incredible impact of 2019-20 feel like many years ago. But, as much as our world has changed since then, the amazing truth of what we were able to achieve together in the last year has not.

I’m excited to share with you the following impact report and all we were able to accomplish together as the Feed Ontario community: food banks, partners, donors, advocates, and supporters. I invite you to take a moment to step back and celebrate with us the impact we had, together, in our communities. Thank you!

Carolyn Stewart
Executive Director, Feed Ontario

“The [Feed Ontario program support] brought joy and nutrition to my children’s lives during hard times. Because of this program we were able to provide our kids with a feeling of familiarity that was healthy too!”

RURAL KIDS PARTICIPANT, Grimsby

Who we are

A united team against hunger

From securing fresh and healthy food sources, to driving change through policy research and innovative programming, Feed Ontario unites food banks, industry partners, and local communities in our work to end hunger and poverty.

A picture of a smiling woman handing a bunch of radishes to another person off camera

FeedON

Our FeedON network provides adults, children, and seniors with nutritious food throughout the year, including: dairy, protein, and produce. Through the support of our partners, we distribute the equivalent of 4.7 million meals annually.

A picture of gloved hands handling lettuce in a garden

Feed Possibility

We Feed Possibility by providing food banks with resources to grow their capacity to distribute fresh food, to collaborate and develop best practices that drive change, and to develop innovative programming for people facing hunger in their communities.

Feed Change

We Feed Change by researching the root-causes of food insecurity, raising awareness of hunger in our province, and advocating on behalf of evidence-based solutions. It is only through our collective action that we will end hunger and poverty in Ontario.

"The dedicated team at Feed Ontario has made it so easy for us to leverage our buying power and food industry relationships while making donations. We’re fortunate to be in the position to make donations and watching these donations go directly to those in need brings us a great deal of joy."

JOE AND MARGOT CRUMP, THE CRUMP GROUP INC

FeedON: Distributing More Healthy Food

With your crucial support, our FeedON network provides adults, seniors, and children across Ontario with nutritious food throughout the year.

More nutritious food

With the support of our generous food, financial, and transportation partners, in 2019-20 Feed Ontario distributed more than 5.6 million pounds of food, serving 522,000 Ontarians facing hunger. That equates to 4.7 million meals and is 400,000 more meals than in 2018-19!

This year we continued to strengthen our commitment to fresh, nutritious food, by sourcing quality items that support a balanced diet for people visiting food banks. More than 76% of the food we distributed was fresh or frozen, a growth of 8% over the previous year. This included meat, eggs, dairy, fruit, and vegetables!

Fresh food

2019-20
0%
2018-19
0%
2017-18
0%
2016-17
0%

Food distributed by category 2019-20

Fresh Food Programs that support local farmers

servings of chicken

MADE POSSIBLE BY

and Maple Lodge Farms

LEARN MORE

servings of milk

MADE POSSIBLE BY

LEARN MORE

servings of eggs

MADE POSSIBLE BY

Burnbrae Farms and Gray Ridge Eggs

LEARN MORE

servings of pork

LEARN MORE

servings of beef

LEARN MORE

How FeedON works

Moving food across the province is not an easy feat. However, with the collective effort of our network of partners, volunteers, and organizations we are able to move more than 5 million pounds of nutritious food to all corners of the province throughout the year.

DONATE

Food (including much-needed milk, eggs, meat, and produce) is donated to Feed Ontario by one of our many partners.

COORDINATE

Food offers are sent to Feed Ontario food banks via our Smarter Needs Allocation Program (SNAP). Food banks request what is needed for their community.

TRANSPORT

With the help of Feed Ontario’s transportation partners, donated food is transported to food banks in every corner of the province.

RECEIVE

Feed Ontario food banks in 128 communities across Ontario receive the donated food to share through their food banks, meal programs, and partner organizations.

Dedicated staff and volunteers at over 1,200 hunger-relief organizations share the donated food with 522,000 people facing hunger, who make over 3.2 million visits annually.

“METRO is committed to the communities we serve across Ontario and Québec. We were proud to answer the call of our long-time partner and be in a position to help Feed Ontario. METRO remains committed to onboard Metro and Food Basics stores in Ontario to our One More Bite food recovery program.”

METRO ONTARIO

Feed Possibility: Providing More Community Support

With your incredible support, we help food banks feed possibility by investing in innovative programming for people facing hunger in their communities.

Food Rescue and Transformation Programs

Farm to Food

In 2019-20 Feed Ontario launched a brand new food transformation program, Farm to Food, in partnership with our member food bank in Windsor, the Unemployed Help Centre. Farm to Food rescues excess vegetables from farms and turns them into nutritious meals for people facing hunger.

30 Farming and Food Producer Partnerships
241,300 lbs of food rescued and transformed
51 food banks received healthy soup*
139,150 lbs of healthy soup distributed across Ontario*

*Not including soup distributed locally in Windsor by the Unemployed Help Centre

Bilingual Ontario Trillium Foundation logo

One More Bite

In partnership with Metro Ontario, One More Bite provides food banks in Ontario with the opportunity to receive rescued fresh food from their local Metro-banner grocery stores to distribute to adults and children living with hunger in their communities. Following a successful pilot, in 2019-20 we began a phased roll out of the program in more than 30 communities across the province. Over the next year we will continue to expand the number of food banks and stores participating in this ground-breaking food rescue program.

34 food banks rescued food
157 Metro and Food Basics stores donated to food banks
1,099,585 pounds of food rescue

Community programs

Rural Kids Program

The Rural Kids Program provides rural food banks in Ontario with funding to support the children they serve with community-specific programs, such as breakfast clubs, snack packs, or kids cooking classes.

23 food banks participated
227,000 meals and snacks served
15,096 kids in rural communities served

Bayer Fund logo

Capacity Building Program

The Capacity Building Program provides food banks in Ontario with funding to grow their capacity to accept, store, and distribute fresh food to adults and children living with hunger.

6 food banks participated
11 pieces of equipment purchased
14,410 clients benefited

Gay Lea Foundation

Feed Ontario Together – Inaugural Symposium

In June 2019, Feed Ontario held its first provincial Symposium – an innovative one day event drawing on the power of working together to unite food banks and industry partners in the development of long-term solutions to hunger. The event engaged food banks from across Ontario in creative sessions to solve complex problems, including:

Open Space Technology to address issues of network capacity and the future of food banking in our province
Table Topics enabling food bank leaders to share with their counterparts from across Ontario about similar challenges and solutions
Workshops on engaging clients in the election process, partnering with grocery stores to rescue food, and operational support

Thank you to our sponsors!

“[Membership with Feed Ontario] allows us to have access to resources that many others don’t… We want to thank Feed Ontario for all they do to support us right here in Burlington, and all of our clients, because that’s who they truly care about… those who need help.”

ROBIN BAILEY, BURLINGTON FOOD BANK

Feed Change: Developing More Hunger Solutions

HUNGER MAP

In the summer of 2019, in partnership with the Fleming College Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program, Feed Ontario released an interactive hunger map that allows users to compare food bank use by provincial electoral riding across the province. The map examines data between January 1st – December 31st 2018, including visit frequency, mean and median income, and housing. Findings from this study included:

Hunger and food bank use exists in every provincial riding in Ontario
Someone visits a food bank in Ontario every 10 seconds
The ridings with the highest food bank use per capita were Ottawa-Vanier, Hamilton-Centre, and Thunder Bay-Atikokan

HUNGER ACTION MONTH

Taking place every September, Hunger Action Month is an Ontario initiative, now run nationally in partnership with Food Banks Canada, which encourages people to work towards a future without hunger through four key actions: educate, advocate, volunteer, and donate. In 2019, we:

Educate: Created customizable tools for food banks to share statistics on hunger and poverty in their communities, and promoted Food Banks Canada’s Impossible Choices
Advocate: Sent 15,000 postcards to MPPs opposing proposed changes to social assistance and demonstrating the impact that would have on food bank clients
Volunteer: Highlighted the stories of some of the incredible volunteers that make food banks possible
Donate: Raised $120,000 to help end hunger in Ontario

Sponsors:

HUNGER REPORT

Feed Ontario’s annual 2019 Hunger Report found that, despite the province’s low unemployment rate, Ontario’s food banks continue to see increasingly high levels of use, and that there is an emerging trend in the number of individuals with employment income that require the support of a food bank to make ends meet. Key highlights of the report include:

27% increase over the last three years in the proportion of adults with employment income accessing Ontario’s food banks
88% increase in the proportion of food bank clients with a recent job loss
Only 28% of unemployed Ontarians are receiving support from Employment Insurance

A photo of a woman looking inside a mostly empty food cupboard

COST OF POVERTY

In October 2019, Feed Ontario released a new report, The Cost of Poverty in Ontario, which examined the relationship between poverty, poor health, the justice system, and lost productivity and made the economic case that investing in people by reducing poverty is not only socially responsible, but financially sound. The report found:

Poverty related expenses is costing Ontario an estimated at $27.1 – $33 billion per year
The poverty rate for unattached adults and families without children increased by 24% between 2012-2015
The introduction of the Ontario Child Benefit resulted in a 24% reduction in child poverty and a 37% reduction in the number of children living in deep poverty between 2012-2015, making a strong case for investments in innovative solutions, like a basic income program, to address poverty in Ontario

READ THE COST OF POVERTY

"As a transportation company with locations across the province, we're proud to help Feed Ontario battle food insecurity. Our drivers and dispatchers are always happy to help using their skills and equipment when we haul food between donors and food banks."

KRISKA TRANSPORTATION GROUP

Feeding the Future: Responding to COVID-19

In the final weeks of our 2019-20 year, the Province of Ontario declared a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Feed Ontario took action through our new COVID-19 Emergency Food Box Program, developed in partnership with local food banks and Food Banks Canada, and made possible by generous contributions from the Government of Ontario, and many caring individuals and organizations.

The program created pre-packed emergency food boxes with a week’s worth of food in one centralized location for food banks across the province. This provided a single solution to help ensure that food banks remained well stocked while supporting labour shortages and physical distancing measures. The program goal was to create and distribute 450,000 emergency food boxes in 2020.

Operation Community Regeneration

Over the next year we will focus on Operation Community Regeneration to help ensure Ontario’s food banks have the resources they need to continue to help our province recover from this pandemic and thrive. With the support of partners like you, together we will:

FeedON: Replenish

In partnership with the food industry, we will replenish food bank supplies by growing Feed Ontario’s existing fresh food donation programs; launching our new Full Shelves Program to provide food banks with more food staples and PPEs; and investing in new food production lines exclusively for Ontario’s food bank network. These programs will leverage our extensive distribution network to ensure food bank shelves in every corner of the province remain full.

Feed Possibility: Renew

Building on food banks’ agility, we will invest in resources to help renew communities and food banks, including developing best practices in partnership with Public Health, training courses, tools for physically distant food delivery, resources to transition to virtual operations where possible, and mental health supports.

Feed Change: Strengthen Resiliance

By working in partnership with government and communities, we will strengthen our collective resilience through data-driven, evidence-based solutions and policies that provide lasting support to our province’s most vulnerable and ensure that communities are prepared for the future.

"[I donated to Feed Ontario because] I struggle to make sure that I have enough food to eat. I don't want others to experience that."

INDIVIDUAL DONOR

Working together, each dollar goes further

Thank you to all of the incredible people and organizations who give their time, products, services, and financial support to Feed Ontario. You make feeding Ontario possible!