It is with great pleasure that we announce that this week’s Ironstone Impact donation will be given to the Business Cares Food Drive. As the 24th annual Business Cares Food Drive officially commences, we are thrilled to have gathered at RBC Place to celebrate this momentous occasion and highlight why this initiative is crucial for our community.
It is important to note that nearly 40% of food bank clients are children, making it imperative for us to come together and support Business Cares during this winter season. With your generous contributions from last year, we were able to deliver a whopping 595,000 pounds of food to the London and Area Food Bank in 2022, which allowed us to help over 40 other programs and social agencies. This includes meal programs like the Soup Kitchen and school breakfast programs, drop-in programs like Youth Action Centre, and other programs like Atlohsa, the Unity Project, Anova, and Mission Services.
Your donations also enabled us to purchase multiple greenhouses, including Allison’s Garden, a facility behind the London Food Bank that produced thousands of pounds of fresh food this past year. We are grateful for your support, and the Business Cares Food Drive Committee would like to thank you for supporting the Food Drive.
It is crucial to understand that the funds donated to the Business Cares program support various programs that are vital to our community. This includes Community Harvest, which increases the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables donated from local farmers to the food bank, Community ReFresh, a program that recovers fresh product from grocery stores that is not saleable but is still safe and edible, Milk and Egg Purchases, which provides milk and eggs to those in need, and Baby Food and Other Food Purchases, which includes purchasing monthly baby formula tailored to the current demand and buying food (both perishable and non-perishable) of great value throughout the year.
Lastly, Business Cares Food Drive supports food security programs that encourage the growing of food in London through Allison’s Garden, Community Greenhouses, and the Green Wall Project. We are proud to have distributed 26 greenhouses to community groups and 310 green walls to individuals to date.