Low-income families with children on social assistance often have to turn to the Dauphin Food Bank.
In a recent report, it showed that a third of children in the Dauphin-Neepawa-Swan River federal riding lived in poverty.
Robin Gambler, Chair of the food bank, spoke with us about the issue and shares some reasons she thinks families have to turn to the food bank for support.
“I think a lot of it is, the rent is pretty high and for someone on social assistance that has to pay that large rent and they don’t have that in their budget, it takes away from their basic needs budget. A lot of places they have to pay their own utilities which could be very pricey as well.”
She also shares with us how many applications for support the food bank receives.
“We’re serving 90 to 100 applications by-weekly which means it could be 250 people in those applications.”
The report by Campaign 2000 showed that 6,910 children aged 0-17 in our riding live in poverty.