Regina Catholic Schools end food donation program for the summer

The Regina Catholic School Board celebrated two months of providing food for families in need on Tuesday.

Since May, they’ve handed out hampers of food twice a month. They’ve given more than 200 packages in that time.

Their last day with this particular program was on Tuesday. In the meantime, they’re encouraging the public to donate to the Regina and District Food Bank. Then, they’ll run other food security programs when the school-year picks up in September.

Lesa George, a nutrition worker at Archbishop M. C. O’Neill Catholic High School, said the pandemic caused many challenges for families who have difficulty feeding their kids. She said children often rely on schools for food, so this program aimed to fill the gap with classes cancelled.

“Once we realized that kids weren’t in school, we knew there would be a lot of kids who would suffer from food insecurities,” she explained.

“If you don’t eat or you don’t eat properly, you don’t function properly.”

They handed out items like peanut butter, margarine, pre-packaged pasta, milk and bread.

“We are there to stretch their dollar. We’re not providing meals for two weeks, we’re just here to stretch their food-dollar,” she explained.

It’s not just the school board that was involved in the initiative: Nutrien and the Breakfast Club of Canada provided funding, and the food bank was involved as well.

“We’ve been blessed with funding from Nutrien and Breakfast Club of Canada to help provide nutrition to students, and we’re very grateful,” said Stacey Gherasim, Superintendent of Education Services. “When schools closed, we were looking for ways to continue helping students and families. We partnered with the Regina & District Food Bank and our staffs were able to help many families at some schools, but we knew we needed to do more.”