List of foods for those on the challenge

You may have heard about The “Do the Math Challenge” which asks participants to live for five days on a diet similar to what a person with low-income receives from a food bank. It’s currently taking place in Peel and it’s very interesting to read about the experiences people are having as they live on what some of our food bank users do.

Their blog can be found at: http://dothemathpeelregion.wordpress.com/

How do you think you would do if you were to take the challenge?

The Mississauga Food Bank Launches Annual Spring Food Drive launches today – April 1^st

With a goal of collecting 60,000 lbs. of food by April 29th, the volunteers and staff at The Mississauga Food Bank are working hard this season to ensure there is enough food to feed our neighbours during the summer. The Spring Food Drive is the second largest annual volunteer effort to source food for Mississauga residents who are in need, and this year the need is even greater. Tragically, 17% of Mississauga residents live in poverty, and a successful Spring Food Drive ensures The Mississauga Food Bank can continue to annually distribute over 2 million pounds of food to meet the growing needs of our hungry neighbours.

Non-perishable food can be donated at all Mississauga fire halls year round and at select grocery stores until April 29th. It will be picked up and delivered to The Mississauga Food Bank where it will be inspected, cleaned, sorted, and stored. Food will then be distributed to 108 food programs across the city.

Most needed items are

• baby food and formula
• beans (dry or canned)
• boxed macaroni & cheese
• canned fish and meat
• canned fruit and vegetables
• canned stew
• cooking oil
• dry pasta
• hot drinks (coffee, tea, hot chocolate)
• juice (boxes, jugs, or cans)
• pasta sauce
• peanut butter
• rice
• soup (dry or canned)

Opportunities are also available for groups to organize an internal food drive. More information and tools for promotion can be found at www.mississaugafooddrive.org.

For more information on the Spring Food Drive, visit www.mississaugafooddrive.org or contact Meghan Nicholls at 905.270.5589 x226 or meghan@themississaugafoodbank.org.

The Mississauga Food Bank is the largest food bank and food distribution program in Mississauga, Ontario supporting over 12,000 clients each month. The Mississauga Food Bank sources, warehouses, and distributes food valued at over $6 million per year. The Mississauga Food Bank operates from a 10,000 square foot leased warehouse with eight full-time staff members, many dedicated volunteers (18,000 hours/year), and a two refrigerated delivery trucks.

Helping to fill empty lunch boxes

The Mississauga Food Bank no longer provides food directly to clients, but sources, manages and distributes food to over 108 food programs, including seven local food banks. We have divided the city into a network of service delivery areas corresponding to postal codes. Clients are assigned to a food bank based on the postal code of their current residency and can receive 7-10 days of food once a month.

But people still have needs for food beyond just what they get at their local food bank, and for this reason, The Mississauga Food Bank supports a variety of breakfast programs, shelters, hot meal programs, drop-in centres for youth, and other social service programs that offer food to their clients. Providing food to member agency organizations means that they are able to re-direct funding towards operations expenses and program costs rather than food costs. We evaluate this each year in our annual member agency survey.

We are proud to partner with a variety of different agencies across Mississauga who are joining in our mission to fight hunger and feed hope. Our goal is to have one new agency per month join The Mississauga Food Bank Network.

To see a full list of member agencies and who has recently joined, visit our Agencies & Partners page.

Spring Food Drive Sort Days: April 9, 22 & 23

ALL APRIL 9 SHIFTS ARE NOW FULL. SHIFTS ARE STILL AVAILABLE FOR APRIL 22 & 23.

Our Spring Food Drive is around the corner and once again we are inviting local high school students to join us to put in a little hard work, collect some community service hours, and have fun!  We will have a morning (9:30am-12:30pm) and afternoon (1:00-4:00pm) shift on April 22 or 23, and will begin accepting applications on March 1^st.  This is a very popular program and we want to allow lots of volunteers to participate, so students will be asked to choose just ONE shift when they first register.

The food drive is also popular with young families, so applications will be open to the public after March 15^th.  Please note that children between 8 and 13 will require parental supervision.  Children under 8 may be tough to keep track of in our busy warehouse, so we recommend they cheer you on from home.

Food sorting will take place at The Mississauga Food Bank warehouse – 36 – 2550 Goldenridge Road, Mississauga L4X 2S3.

Registration will happen through our online database after March 1^st, so please complete an online application or, if you have already applied, please update your profile, then follow these instructions:

1.       Click on the My Activities tab

2.       Click on Activity Sign Up

3.       Select Event Day Support – Spring Food Drive Sort

4.       Select ONE preferred shift

You will be contacted by email to confirm your shift no later than April 1^st.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. THANKS TO ALL WHO ENTERED!

We’re giving away a Blackberry Torch 9800 (value $650, donated by RIM) to promote our work.

How good are your odds of winning? You decide!

It’s free to enter, and once you have entered, you can earn more entries by telling others about how The Mississauga Food Bank is feeding our hungry neighbours. For every eCard you send using our website, you’ll earn another entry in our drawing!

Already entered? Invite others to enter in our drawing. (1 entry for every additional eCard you send)

Enter your name to win a Blackberry Torch 9800 from The Mississauga Food Bank!

We were so sorry to hear about the fire at the Chatham Food Bank that destroyed their facility, including their brand new freezer-cooler and all food, last night.

In the coming week we will be discussing what we can do to help get them back into operations so they can feed those who are hungry in their community.

You can read more about it here: http://www.chathamdailynews.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3016059