One type of bank helps another

Wilma Kenny | Jul 03, 2014

Last week, representatives of the Royal Bank presented Southern Frontenac Community Services (SFCS) with a much needed cash donation of $1,000 for its food bank.

A few weekends earlier local branch manager Tina Hinch, along with several staff members and three of their children, had spent half a day washing and reorganizing the food bank shelves. It was this gift of staff’s personal time that led to the bank’s cash donation, part of the RBC’s ongoing policy of participating in the communities where it has branches.

SFCS Executive Director David Townsend, in thanking Ms. Hinch and Mr. Adamcryck, said the food bank provides a week’s worth of food every month to 70 clients; some are individuals, many represent families. SFCS’s crock pot cooking classes, which teach nutritious recipes using food bank items, then sends its grads home with crock pots, is a recent innovation that has proven popular.

With such a high level of need, it’s easy to understand how shelves that are well-stocked one week can develop alarming gaps only a few weeks later. In spite of its name, the food bank is really a form of community food cache, stocked by those of us who are fortunate to have enough, available to those of us who would otherwise go hungry. Donations come mainly in two forms: actual canned and packaged dry goods, and money. The cash is essential to provide fresh food such as bread, meat, milk and eggs. (Through the summer, harvest from the gardens at Grace Centre adds fresh vegetables.)