Charlottetown food bank moving to bigger building nearby as demand keeps going up
CBC
Charlottetown's main food bank is relocating to a larger building as sky-high grocery prices continue to place an increasing demand on its services.
The Upper Room Food Bank, currently located at 34 Belmont St. in Charlottetown, is moving down the road to the former Chandler's Home Centre location at 15 Plywood Pl.
The move amounts to only "a couple hundred feet," said executive director Mike MacDonald, but it could lead to a meaningful improvement in the food bank's daily operations.
"Every move is a significant move, but it shouldn't be too hard for the clients to find us," he said. "We're always trying to do a little bit better, and this was an opportunity."
The food bank's final day at its Belmont Street address will be Friday, Oct. 25. The new building will open Monday, Nov. 4, with the same hours of operation. In the intervening week, it will be open only for donation drop-offs.
As for the old building, MacDonald said, Holland College owns it and will be making use of the space.
The new building boasts an additional 300 square metres of floor space, but the differences don't end there.
Among the benefits are a bright area for welcoming clients and donors, private offices for meetings with new and returning clients, large loading doors and a dedicated waiting area.
"We always strive to make a nice, comfortable atmosphere for people to come into and feel good about," MacDonald said. "So we're hoping it will help."
Perhaps most important, according to MacDonald, is the extra open space to "take more food in and ship more food out."
The building also has higher ceilings, meaning the food bank will be able to stack pallets of donated food higher.
In recent years, P.E.I food banks have raised the alarm about high demand for their services.
Many regular donors are themselves feeling the pinch of higher grocery prices, meaning declining donations and less capacity to buy food with what donations they do receive.
In September, the situation forced the long-established food bank in Montague to reduce its service.
The amount of money it takes for people to earn a living wage has increased across the province, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The new owner of Ontario steelmaker Stelco says his company "will not disappoint the people of Hamilton and Nanticoke," where the business's major facilities are based.
A Winnipegger is warning others about an intricate scam she says she almost fell for.
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what's believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes.
The Liberal government and the NDP have agreed to introduce a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season, Radio-Canada has learned.
Veterinarians are warning Londoners to make sure their dogs are vaccinated and keeping clean after a deadly virus outbreak was declared in London this week.