The federal government has committed $1 billion over the next five years to implement a national school food program, and local food bank officials say “it’s the momentum we need” to begin addressing food insecurity at local schools.
Announced on April 1 as part of the upcoming federal budget, the program aims to provide meals to an additional 400,000 children per year beginning in the 2024/25 school year.
With one in four Ontario children facing food insecurity, and an 18 per cent food insecurity rate in Orillia, Chris Peacock, the executive director of The Sharing Place, said the challenge will be figuring out the best way forward in cooperation with the federal and provincial governments.
“It's an incredible day, it's something to celebrate – very thankful to the Liberals who put this into their budget,” he told OrilliaMatters. “Now it's time to speak to the provincial governments … to say, 'OK, how is the provincial government going to be working with the … the organizations that are involved with school nutrition to be able to develop the best system possible?'”
Locally, the Sharing Place’s School Fuel program currently provides healthy breakfast food to thousands of students across 23 area schools, with daily offerings like fruit, bagels, granola bars, and other items that meet Canada’s Food Guide.
The program has seen consistent growth over the past several years as need has increased, with roughly 4,000 students accessing the program each day, versus 1,600 prior to the pandemic.
Canada is currently the only G7 country without a national school food program, and Peacock said that while this week’s announcement is great news, it’s only a first step toward implementing a "robust" program.
“When people think, ‘Oh, I'm going to be able to send my kid to school, and they're going to have food prepared for them,’ there is not capacity built at this point to be able to produce a substantial school food program,” he said. “This is the starting block.”
Currently, the Sharing Place funds 50 per cent of a school’s food order through the School Fuel program, which relies exclusively on community donations to operate.
Local schools, like Lions Oval Public School, receive some government funding to carry out school food programs, but also rely on School Fuel and other grant opportunities to meet demand.
Tara Barnett, who runs the breakfast club at the school on a volunteer basis, said government funding covers only 20 per cent of its school food program, with the other 80 per cent coming from the President’s Choice Children’s Charity.
She said the school’s food program — which includes the breakfast club, snack bins in classrooms, and nutrition breaks — is a well-funded program, but one that’s an outlier compared to many other schools.
“All schools don't apply for that funding. We have an awesome volunteer base and we apply for that President's Choice Children's Charity funding,” she said. “They almost doubled their grant monies … two years ago, and then they've held that level, so that's where we get most of our money from.”
She said volunteers are also critical.
“I would say Lions Oval is an outlier, in that we have a very strong program, very strong volunteers,” she said. “I don't think many other schools have a parent volunteer coordinating your program.”
Although the program has been able to meet demand, Barnett said she has seen increased numbers of students accessing food since the pandemic, and she hopes to see universally accessible programs, like the one at Lions Oval, rolled out at all schools.
She applauded the work the Sharing Place has done on its School Fuel program, and suggested funding similar programs would be a good way to administer the federal funds.
“Any program has to be simple enough to administer and accessible to all students, so I think the Sharing Place is really on to something,” she said. “If there could be some kind of program like that in every community ... that would be a good model.”
Although Lions Oval has found success through grants, government funds, and access to programs like School Fuel, Peacock said other local schools have not had the same success.
“The school programs are funded by the government, and then they have to do their own fundraising initiatives as well,” he said. “It's not enough … a lot of schools have run out of money, and are waiting for additional funding to come in.”
Peacock said he has heard stories of students not wanting to open then lunch boxes near their friends, because they know there is nothing inside it, and stressed the importance of healthy food for not only individual students, but entire classrooms.
“The other feedback we've received as well from teachers is just the importance of having access to food for kids that are hungry, and it's disrupting the learning environment, not just for that child for being able to retain the knowledge that they're trying to learn throughout the day, but it can disrupt the entire class,” he said.
Whether the federal funding goes to organizations like the Sharing Place’s School Fuel program, or a new system is implemented, Peacock said he hopes to see something put in place that provides access to “culturally appropriate, healthy food for all kids,” as well as education on local food systems.
“There's no structure in place, and there's all these incredible community organizations like the sharing place that are trying to fill that gap, so now there's the potential for funding that can actually develop a system,” he said.
“We need to leverage the assets that exist, like the Sharing Place, or maybe there's a better system,” he said. “We're not concerned about maintaining our program — we're concerned about kids not getting access to healthy food and learning about our food system.”