Support for East Toronto’s Grace Pascoe food bank includes produce from Malvern Collegiate community garden

By AMARACHI AMADIKE

Amid Toronto’s affordability crisis which has seen food insecurity steadily increase over the past two years, East Toronto community members have continued their show of support for neighbours in need.

Two Malvern Collegiate Institute teachers, Stephanie Cox and Virginia Dawe, as well as their students, have started an initiative that aims to create a community garden for local food bank Grace Pascoe.

“We have six vegetable beds that we put together, plus we have four pollinators,” said Dawe. “They’re small, but it’s a start. This is the beginning of something bigger – something that we want to continue and grow.”

According to the environmental science teacher, the initiative began after her colleague, Cox, applied for TDSB’s Community Connected Experiential Learning Grant and offered to collaborate with Dawe’s class on a project that would benefit both the students as well as their community.

“In our class we talk about food security, especially because it’s a very timely topic given that there has been such a huge increase in food bank usage due to the (rise) in food prices,” said Dawe.

She said that growing food for the food bank was a “perfect collaboration” that will give their students an insight about the community they live in as well as “empowering” them with tools to become part of the solution to Toronto’s affordability crisis.

“I think in Malvern’s area, we don’t often think of it as a food insecure place,” said Dawe. “But there is an unseen level of poverty that not everybody is aware of.”

Grace Pascoe Care Centre Food Bank (at 72 Main St. at the site of Calvary Baptist Church), is located just a few minutes west of Malvern Collegiate and has been experiencing increasing pressures to address the community’s unmet needs. The food bank is open on Thursday evenings from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Two years after the organization reopened post-COVID, demand for their service has been more strained than ever, according to Grace Pascoe volunteer Boafoa Kwamena.

“When we first reopened, we were serving about 130 individuals a week,” said Kwamena. “We’re only open for two and half hours. In mid-April we served 450 individuals.”

Boafoa, who’s also a board member at Daily Bread Food Bank, said that just two weeks after this record turnout, Grace Pascoe served 496 people in one day, breaking their record once more and marking an almost 400 per cent increase in demand from the same period two years prior.

Grace Pascoe’s experiences coincide with other food banks across the City of Toronto.

According to Daily Bread’s Who’s Hungry Report, food bank visits in Toronto increased by 51 per cent between 2022 and 2023, “the highest year-over-year increase on record.”

The report revealed that during this same period, one out of 10 Torontonians relied on food banks – Scarborough having the highest demand. This was an increase from the one out of 20 in 2022.

Although Daily Bread’s 2024 report is yet to be released, Kwamena expects those statistics to depict an even greater increase in food bank usage.

“In February, there were 301,000 client visits to all Daily Bread food banks across the city. This represented a 40 per cent increase compared to the same period last year and 136 per cent increase compared to 2022,” said Kwamena.

Prior to reopening, Grace Pascoe mostly served “neighbours” who reside in close proximity to the food bank. However, being one of the few food banks that serves at night, the food bank has since been attracting people who work during the day and can only seek food assistance in the evenings.

“People are unable to feed themselves,” said Kwamena. “A lot of them are working and, in their own words, doing the right things but are still unable to make ends meet.”

The increase in food costs and salaries that have failed to keep up with inflation has forced many employed Torontonians to rush to food banks after shifts in hopes of alleviating some of their financial pressures.

“We had people coming to us from Eglington and Etobicoke because they work and this is the only food bank that they could attend because we’re open till 8:30 p.m.,” said Kwamena.

This “unsustainable levels” of service demand has forced Grace Pascoe to set boundaries on food bank eligibility.

Since May 16, Grace Pascoe has only been serving people who live between Coxwell Avenue and Victoria Park Avenue, and south of Danforth Avenue to Lake Ontario.

Kwamena told Beach Metro Community News that, although a difficult decision, applying this address requirement helps ensure that “we can continue to serve our neighbours.”

“We open at 6 p.m. and people start waiting in line from 2 p.m.,” said Kwamena. “We were worried that people were going to wait and by the time they got to our doors there wouldn’t be enough food.”

Although the lines outside Grace Pascoe are getting longer by the season, Kwamena said she finds hope and optimism in community initiatives such as that of Cox, Dawe, and their Malvern students.

“What has allowed us to continue to serve our neighbours is the community support,” said Kwamena. “So we are blessed to have neighbours who are seeing our lines increasing and are donating food or funds [to the cause].”

Leading by example, Dawe encouraged her fellow East Toronto residents to donate and volunteer with local food banks such as Grace Pascoe and create awareness that “food insecurity exists in our community.”

“The people working at Grace Pascoe are doing such an incredible service to our community,” she said.

Anyone who would like to donate food items, or monetary contributions, is encouraged to bring their donations to Calvary Baptist Church (72 Main St.) on Wednesdays between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Anyone who would like to volunteer with the Grace Pascoe Food Bank can reach out by email to volunteergpcc@gmail.com for further information.