The Centretown Emergency Food Centre (CEFC), the local food bank for Centretown east of Lyon Street, the Glebe, Old Ottawa South and Old Ottawa East, seeks volunteers to serve on a Management Committee that provides operational and policy oversight of the Centre. Volunteers with a background in marketing and communications, fundraising, or human resources would be particularly welcome. The average time commitment is estimated at 6 hours each month, including management meetings and special projects. Those interested in working with the CEFC should contact the CEFC Chair (allisondingle@sympatico.ca). www.cefcottawa.org.

Centretown Emergency Food Centre Update, March 2021

With Spring coming and COVID vaccinations on the horizon, we are hopeful for what the coming year will bring to the Centretown Emergency Food Centre.

We are still operating under COVID protocols: masking, distancing and sanitizing; reduced volunteer numbers and pre-packaging bags of food to distribute to the people who come to us for help. This will continue until COVID restrictions have been lifted from the community at large and life gets back to ‘normal’ – whatever that is!

We are working with Centretown United Church and with Centre 507 to come up with a plan to use one of the church’s main floor rooms for a new waiting room on a permanent basis. This will provide an accessible, well ventilated, welcoming space for people who come to the Food Centre and to Centre 507. In addition, it will allow us to reconfigure the basement space for more storage and easier access. We are also looking forward to the day when volunteers are able to come back to work and we are able to spend more time face to face with our neighbors.

The pictures below are from early in March when local Tim Hortons franchisees had coffee and donuts delivered to community food banks as a gesture of support for the work that we are doing during these difficult and stressful times. Rob R. from St. Andrew’s is filling in for one of our volunteers (Thank you, Rob!) and was able to enjoy the treats with Pauline B. and the rest of the Food Centre team.

Sincerely,

Diana Mahaffy

Manager, CEFC