Calgary Food Bank Releases First of Its Kind Research Findings

CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwire - May 31, 2011) - The Calgary Food Bank recently completed a first-of-its-kind research project examining client and service data from September 2000 to August 2009, providing a comprehensive analysis of the men, women, and children who use the Food Bank. From this research, a series of briefs are being produced, Today, Briefs #1 and #2 were publically released by our researcher, Dr. Chris MacFarlane, for the first time.

What we learned

• More than 165,000 individuals (representing 81,319 individual households) used the Emergency Food Hamper Program at least once in our research period.
• These individual Calgarians accessed the Emergency Food Hamper Program almost 1,000,000 times during this period.
• 81% of clients used the Program less than 10 times between 2000 and 2009.
• 44% of Emergency Food Hamper Program clients live in house­holds with wage-related income.
• Children and youth are the largest group who benefit from the Emer­gency Food Hamper Program:
  • 63,079 children and youth were helped a total of more than 400,000 times
  • approximately 40% of these children are under 5 years of age.
• Between 18 and 44 years of age (the time associated with family-formation and prime income-generation), a higher percentage of women use the Emergency Food Hamper Program.
• Few seniors access the Emergency Food Hamper Program:
  • 1,798 seniors used the Emergency Food Hamper Program during the research period
  • 208 of these seniors were at least 80 years old when they received their first food hamper.
• Clients use the Emergency Food Hamper Program most between the 9th and 16th day of each month.

On May 27^th, the Food Bank presented the research findings to Calgary Caucus, with the intention of helping our city's leaders better understand their constituents and our clients. A discussion regarding how we as a community move forward with this information ensued.

The findings of this inaugural research project will help the Food Bank better serve clients by tailoring services, identifying community partnerships that could benefit Food Bank clients, and ultimately reduce the number of Calgarians reliant on the Food Bank.

This release is transmitted courtesy of Marketwire.