Kim Wilhelm

Kim Wilhelm

Food Banks Canada

Supporting communities with healthy food Kim Wilhelm and her colleagues at The Food Bank of Waterloo Region help those in need access high-quality, nutritious food – and they often work with farmers to do it. With over 120 community and agency partners, The Food Bank of Waterloo Region is one of the larger Food Bank chapters in Ontario. For Wilhelm, this gives them an opportunity to help other Food Bank locations better manage and distribute donations. “Think of the Waterloo Food Bank as a distribution centre. Our responsibility is to acquire, store and distribute the food to our agency partners and programs. It’s those partners and programs that directly provide food to the community,” says Wilhelm. “We also work with many food banks in Southwestern Ontario, including some smaller ones that simply don’t have the space or staffing to store and distribute large amounts of food. If they receive a phone call from a corporate partner with a significant amount of product to donate, they simply can’t absorb it. We help them manage that.” The corporate partners Wilhelm refers to often includes farm organizations. For example, she and her team are currently working with Dairy Farmers of Ontario to provide milk to their wider community network. “Good food leads to good health. If we ensure people in the community are getting better nutrition in their diets, it will help in other aspects of life.” The Waterloo Food Bank also works with individual farmers. Indeed, large donations of fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat, and other food products are common. “A few years ago, we had an abundance of squash donated by a grower. We had teams of volunteers wash, peel, top and vacuum seal it for distribution well beyond the time we would have been able to distribute full squash,” says Wilhelm. “We’re also building perishable hampers with donations of fresh vegetables. We add a protein and milk or eggs if we can, then distribute them as a package to individuals and families in need of assistance. The packages always look different – it just depends on what has been donated.”