In January 2024, our weekly food program moved to a new location inside the Kimbourne Park United Church in the East Danforth neighbourhood, and we’ve been thrilled with how this space has allowed us to continue to serve more families in need over the past year. “The team at the church is so great — their community support and their community outreach has been so wonderful,” says Jen Garvan, our community program supervisor.
Every week, approximately 120 women come through the church doors to access food for themselves and their families — only two years ago we were seeing half as many regular attendees.
As with most food programs, we depend on donations from our community and agencies. Every Tuesday morning, our friends at Second Harvest — a food rescue charity — deliver fresh, frozen, and packaged foods. From week to week, we fill food baskets with a wide variety of foods, like fresh fruit and vegetables, pasta and rice, peanut butter, and milk. We round out each basket with stock from our own non-perishable food pantry to ensure that each family receives a nourishing mix of protein, canned and boxed goods, and produce.
In the fall of 2024, our team completed a feedback survey with food program participants, to learn more about their experience with the program, the impact of attending, and their suggestions for the future. One of the most inspiring stats shows that 91% of clients say that they have increased access to food, thanks to the Nellie’s food program. These women told us that getting a food bag is helpful to their household, allows them to eat more food, and helps them spend less money on food. On the other hand, some women told us that they wished that we would provide more food in the bags, and that our food program was held in a more central location.
For her part, Jen hopes that we can continue to evolve this program to meet even more of our clients’ needs. One issue that she’s currently working through is how to best accommodate the women while they’re waiting to receive their bag. “Unfortunately we don’t currently have space for the women to wait inside,” Jen explains. “We don’t want anyone to be waiting too long outside — especially in the winter, and knowing that 80% of our users are seniors. Our staff has been doing a great job of moving things along as quickly as possible and checking on everyone outside. Recently we gave out hand and foot warmers to keep everyone as warm as possible while they wait.”
To help create more of a community building experience for our food program clients, Jen hopes that we can eventually move our program again into an even bigger space, and in a more central location in the city. “Ideally it would be great to be able to include more of a drop-in experience for the food program, so that the women can come inside, have a tea, and socialize with each other,” says Jen.
While there have been potential partnership opportunities to increase the capacity of the food program and open it up to the entire community, it’s crucial to the Nellie’s team that the program stays connected to our mission of supporting women and their children fleeing violence, poverty, and homelessness. “Whatever we do has to align with who Nellie’s is,” Jen explains. “We need to put the needs and safety of the women we serve first.”
To make a secure online donation to our food program, please donate here.