Ottawa residents, businesses, organizations, emergency services and sports teams have helped fill the shelves at the Ottawa Food Bank.
The CTV Morning Live Holiday Helpers Food Drive raised a record $387,485 on Friday to help support the food bank through the holiday season and into 2025.
“A huge number,” Rachael Wilson, CEO of the Ottawa Food Bank, said Friday morning.
“An amazing day; absolutely incredible.”
“We have to spend $10 million a year on food every year, half of that is fresh. This is going to go so far supporting hundreds of people in our city for weeks to come.”
During the three-hour live broadcast on CTV Morning Live, donations of all sizes were dropped off to support the Ottawa Food Bank. The donations included $10,000 from Doyle Salewski, $102,416 from Capcorp financial, $110,000 from CLV Group and $35,000 from Amazon Web Services.
Capcorp Financial makes a $102,000 donation to the CTV Morning Live Holiday Helpers Food Drive in support of the Ottawa Food Bank.
Every dollar counts, letting the Ottawa Food Bank buy what’s needed most, when it’s needed.
“The need in the community right now is the highest we’ve seen, unfortunately,” Wilson said during the CTV Morning Live Holiday Helpers Food Drive. .
“We relay on 98 per cent on donations from the community. We’re only able to do the amazing work that we do thanks to the amazing generosity of people in Ottawa.”
Wilson says all the donations “warms us up.”
“We know Ottawa so incredibly generous and so supportive of the Ottawa Food Bank.”
The Ottawa Food Bank says one in four households faced food insecurity in 2023, up from one in seven households in 2022. Thirty-seven per cent of users to the Ottawa Food Bank were children and youth under the age of 18, and 42 per cent of visitors were single adults.
Members of the U16 AAA Ottawa Next Level girls basketball team drop off a donation for the CTV Morning Live Holiday Helpers Food Drive. (CTV Morning Live)
The food bank spends $10 million a year on food, and Wilson says financial donations help support those purchases.
“Those cash donations are critical. They help us busy those fresh items that are so expensive, but so needed for the community,” Wilson says.
The Ottawa Food Bank shared a list of the most needed items heading into the holiday season. The items include:
- Canned salmon and tuna
- Dried legumes
- Nut butter
- Canned veggies
- Canned fruit
- Diapers
- Pasta
Monetary donations can also be made online. The Ottawa Food Bank says cash donations help purchase needed items throughout the year.
The Holiday Helpers Food Drive is proudly sponsored by Box Me Up and Doyle Salewski.