Loaves and Fishes Community Food Bank is hoping a student-only food depot at John Barsby Secondary School will serve as a blueprint for depots in other schools. The food depot program at the Nanaimo school supplies hampers that provide food for children for the weekend on a referral basis.
Nanaimo is known as an area with high levels of child poverty.
Alex Counsell, Operations manager at Loaves and Fishes estimates about 200-250 people a week that access Loaves and Fishes are under the age of 18 (Nanaimo News Bulletin Oct.2013, Karl Yu).
On this week’s program, we will be talking with Peter Sinclair, Executive Director of the Nanaimo Loaves and Fishes Food Bank, about youth poverty and food security programs to address the needs of youth living in poverty in Nanaimo.
