Food bank operation is but one part of our operating model, which has evolved over a period of almost eight years. The Muslim food bank grew out of the Surrey food bank to serve the needs of food bank clients who had special dietary needs, like halal, kosher, vegetarian, vegan, etc. While our client-base demographic is predominantly Muslim from all ethnicities, we are non-denominational from a Muslim perspective and also try to serve families from other faiths and cultural communities.
While food bank operation is our core program, this has been supplemented over time with five other programs, i.e., the ASPIRE caseworker program, prison outreach, youth support, refugee support, and community capacity building. At the outset, it is important to stress that we make our submission from a grassroots perspective. It emerges, not from analysis of large amounts of statistical, national data, but rather from real-world, localized experiences, playing out in the lives of the thousands of Canadians our team has interacted with since our inception.
Throughout the development of our programs, we've always applied the principle of leveraging existing social services rather than creating new ones. We recognize that the capacity of social services is not always optimally employed. An accessibility gap often exists between service delivery centres and the communities in need. This gap is not so much one of physical space, but manifests itself more often in cultural, language, and other barriers. In addition to the plethora of trauma-induced mental health challenges, we've seen additional mental and emotional health challenges stemming from the racial and religious discrimination experienced by our clients.