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Sudbury Food Bank prepares for back-to-school

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With the focus now on September and back to school, officials at the Sudbury Food Bank say they’re preparing the best that they can.

“We have no view of what the numbers are going to be at the present time, only because we’re coming into basically a start from day zero here compared to COVID-19,” executive director Dan Xilon said. “Through the COVID [months], it was substantially up. But are we going to get there now this year? No. Are we going to be up slightly higher than the two years before COVID? I suspect that’s probably where it’s going to go, but there’s no scientific method being used at the moment to determine that.”

He said in a normal year, the number of users typically increases slightly in September. But as the world prepares to return to normal as more and more COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, it has become more of a guessing game.

“We prepared for the numbers before COVID and then, of course, we added a percentage to it that we felt was an appropriate percentage of stuff that we’re going to need, and then it’s my job, with the support of the community, with the suppliers, to get to that point and that’s where we’re aiming for right now,” Xilon said. “We believe that we’ve picked a reasonable figure of how (many) people we expect to service. I mean, that’s somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10,000-11,000 a month. But that counts school kids in there, now don’t forget.”

Although the food bank has faced challenges over the past several months, Xilon said the organization has been able to keep up with demand and hasn’t had to cancel any programs.

Donations from the community continue to help keep families in Sudbury fed, he said. Which is something he doesn’t expect to change once the school bell rings again.

“Presently, we’re doing our best to get the food funds in to meet the need. With any kind of luck at all and thanks to the support we get, we are thinking we’re going to be able to meet the need,” Xilon said. “I mean, you never know what’s going to happen, but we’re thinking that the need is going to be met. Under any circumstances, it will be met to the best of our ability.”

Recently the Sudbury Food Bank received a substantial donation of $10,000 from Allstate Insurance.

“We really recognize that a lot of charities have had difficulties during the COVID period to raise donations and to be able to service the community the way they would,” said Gene Myles, the Sudbury agency manager for Allstate Insurance Company. “The Sudbury Food Bank supports 44 other agencies from what I understand in my conversations with Dan, and that is incredible. So we wanted to provide those funds to the Sudbury Food Bank and have them distribute the food and the necessities that they could.”

This donation is part of a national program where over $210,000 was given out across the country to help support recovery and relief efforts amid the ongoing pandemic.

“The Sudbury Food Bank has been such a consistent helper and member of the community for so long and that’s really where we felt we could do the most good in recovery,” Myles said.

Officials say that $10,000 will translate into $60,000 worth of food for the food bank and will help buy school snacks for kids' lunches.

Some staples that the food bank is always in need of are snacks, supplies for sandwiches, and peanut butter.

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