For at least ten years in Whitehorse we've been discussing having a food bank service available to the most needy citizens. It was obvious that we needed that kind of service. We opened the doors on April 30 of this year, so it's new. We had the board working on this for over a year before opening day. Before April 2009, I think Whitehorse was the last capital in Canada not having a food bank for its population. It's good news for us, and it's working fine.
I want to give you some numbers on the situation here. Since April we have had 750 clients. They fill out forms to indicate eligibility, and those forms represent 1,470 people. A client could be from one person up to nine persons. We have one household of nine individuals.
The food bank has a staff of one, which is me, and the others helping are volunteers. We have a list of 100 volunteers. The numbers are always increasing, so it's changing fast. We have 50 active volunteers most of the time.
We have a lot of donations every month from around 75 individuals or businesses that donate food or money. We give out around 300 hampers each month to those clients. Not all of the clients come every month; we have a lot of clients who are just passing by Whitehorse, especially during the summer, and they've heard about the food bank. They come and get one bag and continue with their travel.
The population of Whitehorse is approximately 23,000 people. From these numbers it appears that about 5% of the population needs the food bank, but that's not the reality because, as I said, some people are just passing by or are coming from local communities. We're not just serving Whitehorse; we're also serving local communities. People are driving from Mayo to get a bag of food. The need is there, and the need exists across the Yukon.
Anyone can be a client of the food bank if they have proper ID. Right now, they can only have one hamper per month, which represents about three days of food. They have fresh food and canned goods. Depending on the day, we may have extra. Most of the food we give is from donations, but we do buy some things fresh each week to put in the bags.
There has been a need. In the Yukon we have had emergency services available for people who would drop by and get some food to help for the day, but this is the first time....
It's working well, and the goal for the near future is to give two hampers each month to clients to cover at least one week. The long-term goal is that we won't exist at all: we'll close because everything is fine.
Our clients are everyone. They have different backgrounds. Most of our clients are single men on social assistance, but we do have a lot of immigrants, single mothers, first nations, or individuals who have just lost a job. Maybe the car broke down and they can't pay.
I have noticed that a lot of people cannot afford their food because of housing. Rent here is so expensive that most of the time the money goes straight to that. Especially when there is a rise in the rent, we see more people coming in. I also noticed that when school starts, it's hard to pay for all the clothing with winter coming, and school materials are needed as well. When summer is coming, we have a whole new crowd. Next year is going to be our second summer, so we'll see if the trend is the same.
From my observation, what I think the federal government could do is have a national anti-poverty strategy for Canada, with clear and feasible objectives that could be achievable and applicable for all jurisdictions in Canada. Sometimes we create big strategies that are good maybe in Toronto, but they may not work for a small jurisdiction like Whitehorse.
It's hard, because we don't have stats regarding use of shelters or our food resources in Whitehorse or in the Yukon. We don't have any stats at the moment, so it's hard for us. We had to prove that we needed a food bank in Whitehorse, because we didn't have those numbers. All the service providers, mostly in Whitehorse, knew that the need was there, but we didn't have the numbers to prove it.
We also need a national housing strategy that could be part of that national anti-poverty strategy. I also think we should work with national organizations on the root cause of poverty. I think we should think out of the box to create and reinvent the system, which doesn't really work right now.