Fredericton Community Kitchens holds Mega Stuff-a-Bus food drive to help city lunch programs

The Fredericton Community Kitchens held a Mega Stuff-A-Bus food drive Saturday, with five buses collecting non-perishable items throughout the city. 

The items collected will then be donated towards city schools.

"October is student hunger month,” said Cassandra LeBlanc, the executive director at Fredericton Community Kitchens. “We're doing a lot of different initiatives throughout the month to share information and to raise awareness for the Student Hunger Program."

“Today, any cash or cheques, money that is donated is going directly to the Student Hunger Program but any of the food that's donated, we love to help our partners, so we're stocking the store room of Kat's Kitchen at Fredericton High School and Feed the Lions at Leo Hayes [High  School]."

Inflation is driving even more kids to rely on their school lunch programs.

"We've absolutely seen an increase and we've seen an increase in our other programs,” LeBlanc said.

“The pandemic and post-pandemic has definitely had an impact on people's budgets."

"There's students lined up every single day, morning and lunch, looking for food,” said Marion Hiltz, a teacher at Fredericton High School.

Feed the Lions and Kat's Kitchen not only support students throughout the school week, but send families in need groceries home for the weekend through their backpack program.

"With the kids that volunteer, they'll take either a morning for breakfast or a lunch shift, and they give up part of their lunch hour and they're there to help organize the food and hand it out to students in need,” Hiltz said.

The Fredericton Community Kitchens' lunches at city schools has increased from an average of 250 to 300 lunches a day.

"We've got a lot of students that would not come with food,” said Tiresa Lancaster, a teacher at Leo Hayes High School. “We know the impact that being hungry or being well fed can have on an education. We'd have a lot of kids who would be struggling academically, would be struggling with behaviourally, if there wasn't access to food."

The student lunch programs hope Saturday's Mega Stuff-a-Bus food drive will help stock the shelves at their schools into the new year -- both in class and at home.

"Typically, most weeks that we were doing the backpack program, we might do between 80 and 100,” LeBlanc said. “Now, we're doing about 150, so we've seen a big increase. The daily lunch program is more moderate."

Saturday's collections won't be totalled until Monday.

The Fredericton Community Kitchens' goal for the month of October is to raise $40,000 to combat hunger throughout the City of Fredericton.