A lot of organizations rely on the holiday season but for the Airdrie Food Bank, to say that the four week period before Christmas is vital to them would be a massive understatement.

Executive Director Lori McRitchie says the Christmas season is a time for the Food Bank to stock up to get them through some lean times during the year.

"We get many of our donations for the whole year within a four week period.  People's hearts at Christmas just open and they want to give and support their neighbours and we are so grateful for that.  The food and funds that we receive at Christmastime is what carries us through the rest of the year.  So 70 percent of our donations for the whole year come in during that four week period.  We use those supplies to get us through the lean months so, yes, Christmas is an important time for us."

Fortunately, McRitchie says, Airdrie is a very special place and a very generous place.  "Airdrie does events for us, we have seniors on a pension who drop by with two cans of soup and say 'someone is worse off than I am.'  Hearts are just so giving.  I quite often say I have the best job because I get to see the goodwill that exists in our community every day."

McRitchie says it's amazing to see how the community works together to support the Food Bank.  Businesses, individuals, schools.  Every part of the community gives.  

McRitchie says now that we're in the midst of that four week period that's vital to the Food Bank, she's seeing the same generosity of spirit in Airdronians continuing.  However, she's also seeing an increased need and a much larger number of Food Bank users.

"We're seeing a fairly large increase in the number of users at this time of year.   Our numbers for November were the highest in our history and that seems to be continuing in December, which is quite unusual.  Because of other programs that happen in the community, our numbers sometimes drop a little bit in December because they're taking advantage of other programs and will come and get our support later on.  But, boy we're busy with people who need help right now so we're kind of seeing busyness on both sides but with the support of our community we're still able to meet the needs."

McRitchie says the Food Bank is ramping up their school programs that provides lunches for school kids and are now up to 200 lunches a week at four schools.  They also have their 'Snack Attack' program for 28 schools in the area that provide snacks for hungry school children.

"We also really need breakfast items, like pancakes and syrup, things for Christmas dinner because we provide those items for Christmas meals for everyone that comes in.  We could use canned fruit and fresh product.  We've moved up to giving about 45 percent fresh products in our hampers.  We want to see healthier foods going in our hampers for our clients and we need funds to purchase those fresh items."

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