Harvesting Change

For 25 years, Winnipeg Harvest has provided more than food for those in need.

Walking into the Winnipeg Harvest offices, you would never guess you’re at a food bank, the mountains of food stored in the adjoining warehouse being the only giveaway. A remarkable amount of positive energy flows through the building, bolstered by the smiling faces of everyone from the staff to the volunteers to those accessing the non-profit organization’s services.

“When you walk through the building, you can’t help but feel good. This is an organization that’s dealing with issues that are very sad and upsetting to people—nobody wants to rely on the food bank—but there’s a spirit that belies the need for the organization,” says Sherri Walsh, currently on her second term as Winnipeg Harvest’s board president. 

But what many fail to realize is that Harvest is not just a food bank that distributes food to over 49,000 hungry people each month. It is also committed to maximizing public awareness of hunger while working towards long-term solutions to hunger and poverty.

“Most people are surprised when we tell them the extent of what we do,” says Walsh, who first became involved with Harvest when she began volunteering there in 1995 with her then three-year-old son. “We have sort of a two-pronged mandate: one is to provide food when needed and the other is to raise awareness of the issues surrounding hunger and poverty, with the goal to reduce the need for the food bank.”

Last year, Harvest distributed more than 10 million pounds of food to its clients and more than 320 agencies in Winnipeg and across the province with the Manitoba Association of Food Banks, including community centres, schools, daycares and soup kitchens. Everyone from seniors to students to those on Employment and Income Assistance accesses the food bank, with many of its clients actually employed. 

“Just because you have an income coming in, that doesn’t mean it will be sufficient to meet your basic needs,” says Walsh. “Food budgets are often people’s only area of discretionary income—their rent is fixed, their bus tickets are fixed, their utilities are fixed. So what happens when something comes up? They take it out of their food budget.” It’s for that reason that Harvest also collects school supplies for children and teens.

Since it does not receive any operational funds from the government, Harvest relies solely on donations of food, time and money from the community. Because of its dependence on volunteers—the ratio of volunteer hours to paid staff hours is eight to one—Harvest can actually leverage every dollar that’s donated into $20 worth of food.

The organization also teaches people how to bank food in different ways, like growing their own produce. At the back of the warehouse lie recycling boxes brimming with vegetables, showing clients how to garden in a small space and adding yet another resource to Harvest’s food collection.

And the distribution of food is only a small portion of what Harvest offers Manitobans. It also provides advocacy, referrals and free income tax returns to low-income clients, and lobbies government on issues of importance to those accessing its services. Walsh also likens the organization to a sort of barometer for the economy, as staff are vigilant about observing what’s going on in the community and noting increases or decreases in need for the food bank.

A recent initiative saw Harvest work alongside several community organizations to put together a systematic complaint about the inadequacies of social assistance rates. As a result of the complaint, the provincial ombudsman’s office did an investigation and came up with a report with over 60 recommendations as to how the social assistance program needs to make changes, a decision that will have a huge impact on many of Harvest’s clients.

One of the women at the frontlines of these initiatives is Catherine Wirt, Harvest’s referrals coordinator, who is also responsible for public education. As well as dealing with the people who walk through Harvest’s doors seeking assistance, she communicates with the various partner agencies and attends advisory committee meetings on behalf of the organization.

“I get to see different people every day, which keeps it fresh and exciting,” says Wirt, who, like many others, originally started volunteering at Harvest before joining the team full-time. “Every though I’ve been here for seven years now, it never gets boring. My involvement here has just enriched my life in so many ways.”

 As a true testament to the value placed on Harvest’s services, more than half of the volunteers are actually clients themselves, either past or present, and rack up almost 300,000 volunteer hours a year. “What you see is people who rely on the food bank and feel respected, so they want to give back to the organization,” says Walsh. “They’re all part of a community. The few days a year that we’re closed, people really feel at a loss for not being able to be here.”

Volunteer Tiffany Mamakeesic echoes she doesn’t know what she would do without Harvest. After overcoming some personal struggles, she joined her mother in volunteering and has since worked in nearly every area of the organization, from sorting food to liaising with the community agencies that come to pick it up.

“When I first started there, I was volunteering only once a week and now I’m there about three times a week,” she says. “The people there offer amazing support. They’ve helped me out so much that I just love working there.” 

And Harvest’s clients, staff and volunteers have much to look forward to in the coming year. Thanks to one-time capital funding from the Canada-Manitoba Infrastructure Stimulus Fund, the organization is expanding its current location into a much larger, more efficient space, nearly doubling its size and transforming the site into a two-storey building.

 “Harvest has grown so quickly, unfortunately, because the need is there,” says Kate Brenner, the organization’s director of development, who is raising money for the new building and putting together a plan Harvest can use to keep generating revenue in the future. “We need to have the space to be able to provide the services and training that the clients require.” 

In addition to Harvest’s current services, the new facility, which is scheduled to open in February 2011, will expand on the community centre concept and act as a training hub for Harvest clients. Plans for the new building include rooftop container gardens and even a training-grade kitchen, which will bring in local chefs to train clients to prepare food and help them become employable in a commercial setting. 

Indeed, all of the organization’s services—and those women working behind the scenes— make Harvest much more than just a food bank. “Something that’s not well-known is Harvest’s role as a capacity-building organization,” says Wirt. “We’re working towards justice, but in the meantime, people have to eat.” In that quest for justice, the staff and volunteers have managed to create a true place of empowerment, a place where human rights can be put into action. “This place is so uplifting,” says Brenner. “It’s good for the soul.”

If you would like more information about Harvest’s services or would like to donate time, money or food, visit www.winnipegharvest.org.