{"id":1467,"date":"2011-11-16T14:54:21","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T22:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=1467"},"modified":"2011-11-16T15:02:51","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T23:02:51","slug":"food-bank-use-more-prevalent-among-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2011\/11\/16\/food-bank-use-more-prevalent-among-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Food bank use more prevalent among students"},"content":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA (CUP)\u2014HungerCount, an annual study of food banks and food programs in Canada, found that in 2011, an average of 851,000 individuals were assisted by food banks each month, and four percent of them were postsecondary students.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour percent means that there are more than 34,000 students every month that are going to a food bank for help,\u201d says Food Banks Canada executive director Katharine Schmidt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a group of people in this country that is important to us,\u201d says Schmidt. \u201cEducating our young people and preparing people for their futures is important, so to know that we\u2019ve got about 34,000 Canadians who are walking into or getting help from a food bank each and every month, who are post-secondary students, is a large number.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A volunteer processes apples at a student food bank (photo by ASU Enrollment Marketing & Communications).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since 2008, overall food bank use in Canada has increased by 26 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is that someone using a food bank could be your neighbor, it could be a friend, it could be a family member, it could be somebody you sat next to on the bus on the way to school; really, it could be just about anyone,\u201d says Schmidt. \u201cThe reason people end up at food banks is because their income is not high enough to cover the cost of basic needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two percent of those receiving assistance from food banks cite student loans or scholarships as their primary source of income. The cost of housing, job quality, and accessibility to employment insurance are all barriers students face, according to Schmidt.<\/p>\n

Food bank use has increased on campuses as well. Based on numbers from the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO), the number of people using their food bank has increased from 259 in 2007, to 3,534 in 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing because 10\u201315 years ago, there weren\u2019t campus food banks, and the majority of campuses now have food banks,\u201d observes Schmidt. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting how they\u2019re helping to service those that need help with some really creative ways to do it so that there isn\u2019t a stigma, and it allows students to get some help with a lot of dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond being a student, there\u2019s no set of eligibility criteria to access the SFUO food bank service.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ask that in order for students to have access to the food bank they produce a student number; it\u2019s really simple. We don\u2019t ask for a lot of details or a lot of specifications, just that they can prove that they\u2019re a student here, or that they\u2019re an employee,\u201d explains Chris Hynes, SFUO food bank employee.<\/p>\n

Hynes and his coworkers are currently collecting information about who accesses the food bank service on their campus. They have found that students with dependents are more likely to be regular clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents shouldn\u2019t have to choose,\u201d says Hynes, \u201cbetween paying tuition, paying rent, and buying food.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA (CUP)\u2014HungerCount, an annual study of food banks and food programs in Canada, found that in 2011, an average of 851,000 individuals were assisted by food banks each month, and four percent of them were postsecondary students. \u201cFour percent means that there are more than 34,000 students every month that are going to a food […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-november-16-2011"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1467"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1480,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions\/1480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}