Food insecurity drives demand for Saskatoon free school lunch program

WATCH: A Saskatoon school lunch program is seeing a surge in demand.

The Innovation School Food Program, formerly known as “Centralized Kitchen,” provides healthy lunches for students who otherwise wouldn’t have one.

“This program feeds some kids in schools that aren’t typically the schools you’d think there was hungry children,” said Gord Androsoff, executive director of CHEP Good Food Inc., which runs the program.

“So, schools outside of the core neighborhoods. So those schools anonymously contact us and let us know how many lunches they need each week.”

The relaunch is part of a five-year partnership between Innovation Federal Credit Union and Saskatoon’s CHEP Good Food Inc.

“There’s the old adage of you can’t learn on an empty stomach. Kids need a nutritious food for their health and wellness,” said Heather Jackle, CHEP’s community relations facilitator.

Organizers say there’s been a sharp increase in demand for the program, which highlights a growing food insecurity crisis.

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According to Jackle, the issue was particularly noticeable when students returned to school following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our demand increased by almost 80 per cent, which is quite significant. So, it’s just folks needing a little extra support, families needing support for their children and accessing food,” Jackle said.

The rising cost of living has left many families making difficult choices when it comes to the necessities, said Androsoff.

“For families that are on low incomes, rent, housing takes up the biggest chunk of their income, and there’s often not much left for food,” he said.

While the program has previously served over 33,000 students in a school year, the summer months provide another challenge when it comes to providing nutritious meals.

CHEP’s executive director says while this partnership between CHEP and the Innovation Federal Credit Union will certainly go a long way, there is still a much larger issue to be addressed.

“It’s a societal problem, and I think we need to challenge our politicians to answer some of these questions,” Androsoff said.

“These are things that federal, provincial governments used to have a greater hand in, and now we’ve downloaded those to the community based organizations like us. And we don’t have the funding that comes along to support that. We’re trying to do as much as we can with very little.”