As community services continue to close, Chalmers’ Food Pantry remains open and becomes even more important to the people we serve. We are already seeing more guests in April than we did in March and we expect those numbers to continue to increase as the ongoing pandemic pushes more people in our community into food insecurity.
In order to address the greater need, the Board of Directors has made the decision to welcome guests to access our Food Pantry once per week, as opposed to once every other week. We‘ve made a few other changes to our service to maintain a safe environment for everyone involved. If you will be paying us a visit in the coming months, please see the COVID-19 announcement on our homepage for the full list of changes.
We would also like to take this opportunity to recognize the incredible generosity we‘ve seen from the community of Guelph in these past few weeks. In tough times, people feel a desire to help, and it shows. We‘ve seen an increase in new donors this month, which is another trend we expect will continue.
It’s not only the people of Guelph that are proving their generosity during this time, but our community partners as well. We’re very honored to be the recipients of $5,000 in Emergency Funding from our local United Way and the Guelph Community Foundation.
While the generosity we’ve seen from the community these past few weeks has been great, the need is still greater. Just last week we ran out of food only 20 minutes into a service that was supposed to last 2 hours. As the number of people we serve increases, our food budget increases too.
As you may have seen on our Twitter or Facebook pages, we are not accepting in-kind donations during the pandemic for the safety of our guests, donors and volunteers. We are accepting financial donations online or via cheques sent by mail to 41 Macdonell. If you would like to support our work on an ongoing basis as we navigate this crisis, a monthly donation can be set up quickly & easily through our Canada Helps page.
Once again, we’d like to thank our community in Guelph, not only for helping us continue to serve our guests with dignity and respect, but also for reminding us of the power of community and human generosity that glows brightest during dark times.
On behalf of the Board of Directors,
Debbie Stanley, Chair
This information may now be outdated. For more information on our current COVID-19 response, please click here.