By the end of the work week, mornings are busy at the Kamloops Food Bank. An assembly line of volunteers sort, pack, and deliver hundreds of bags for the Starfish Backpack program.
“Obviously every year we kind of expect a bit of an increase in the numbers of backpacks that we distribute. This year though, it went up exponentially,” explains Food Bank Events and Communication Coordinator Kennedy Epp.
For the last six years, the Starfish Backpack program has been feeding school children in need.
Every week, the child receives a grocery bag full of food from the Kamloops Food Bank.
“It hits their hearts when they hear children don’t have food, and I think that’s something for all of us that’s impossible to understand. There are children in our communities that don’t have food when they go home,” said Kamloops Food Bank executive director Bernadette Siracky.