Harvest Manitoba says food banks seeing more people with jobs, more kids than ever before

Harvest Manitoba says it is seeing an unprecedented demand for food banks amid inflation, with thousands of Manitobans, many who have jobs, needing help to put food on the table.

Vince Barletta, president and CEO, said food bank use in the past year alone has increased 40 per cent. He said, last month, 40,000 people visited a food bank in Manitoba. Of those people, he said 15,000 were children.

"We need the help of all Manitobans at this time because the need that we are facing is absolutely unprecedented," he said, adding inflation has been a driving factor.

"The face of the food bank is also changing. We are seeing 25 per cent of food bank users in Manitoba are people with jobs," he said. "And more kids than ever before."

This comes as the province announced Monday it is giving a $3 million grant to Harvest Manitoba to help support food banks in urban and rural communities in Manitoba. The province also announced Monday that 29 not-for-profit community organizations have been selected to receive funding through Manitoba's previously announced $1.75 million Food Security Fund.

Barletta told CTV News the $3 million will largely go toward buying food which will be used in food hampers distributed to food banks recipients all over Manitoba.

"This money will go a long way to make sure that the food keeps flowing and your communities and your food banks will continue to have that," he said.

Barletta added. while Harvest Manitoba is thankful for the funding, he said it is looking forward to working with the government to get the demand for food banks to go down.

"We can't be back here next year having this same announcement. We have to get the numbers going the other way."