06/19/2026
How are things going at the food bank?
It's good to be honest, even in the midst of a fundraising campaign. At our food bank, there is both a feeling of proud defiance AND a hint of quiet despair. Prior to the pandemic, our food bank was only visited 11,000 times a year. It was busy, but manageable. Over the past 12 months, we were visited an astounding 41,087 times with 9,473 unique community members reaching out to us for support multiple times throughout the year. The affordability crisis is real and cannot be denied. Public Health Ontario has noted that nearly 30% of Hamiltonians are now food insecure.
Welcome Inn operates its food bank out of an old church building that was never designed to have volunteers receive and sort 123,261 days worth of food. We don’t have a loading dock. Volunteers carry in the boxes by hand, down a flight of stairs. We have an aging food bank truck that has to drive across our grass to access the basement and walk-in fridge. The truck needs to be replaced this year. We operate our food bank with one full-time staff member, and she manages a team of 120 volunteers who work over 10,000 hours. At the end of the fiscal year, we do celebrate. We celebrate the fact that we survived, that we battled our way through the busyness, that we served so many people who need support. The proud defiance, though, is coupled with a hint of despair. How can we be expected to continue expanding the food bank to meet the growing need when we can only fit so many volunteers in the building, when there are only so many hours in the day, when there’s only so much food to be distributed. We survived this year, but what about next?
The accomplishments of our volunteers and staff are many: Over half of our volunteers are also community members who access our programs, and we know that volunteering with us builds capacity and fosters a sense of belonging for some of Hamilton’s most vulnerable. We have, once again, expanded our referral system and connected community members with our other support programs. We tracked 11,331 dietary requirements and served a diverse population with dignity and respect. We partnered with Hamilton Food Share, providing community members with access to fresh and frozen foods, and we established a new, smaller partnership with Food For Life.
At the same time, we are living a harsh reality: We can only fit so many volunteers in our basement, and they can only pack so many boxes in a day. We have improved the efficiency of our system; and yet, we are now regularly having to close our doors early, often by noon. We can only serve 70 households a day, and we are now having to turn people away. Despite all of our accomplishments, we still finish each day feeling a bit defeated . . . if we are honest.
When you donate to Welcome Inn, you are keeping us afloat and encouraging our staff and volunteers. We desperately need the support. Like so many others, though, we are also hoping something changes and that the affordability crisis ends soon.
