Richmond church feeds hungry students, but more help needed

As Richmond residents and community members prepare for their day, volunteers at a local church are already in the kitchen between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. ensuring hungry students get lunches.

For the past 12 years, St. Anne's Steveston Anglican Church, near Francis and No. 1 roads, has run a school lunch program where volunteers make and deliver fresh sandwiches (and sometimes wraps) to Richmond schools daily.

But the need is outstripping available resources and some schools requesting help are being turned away, explained Sharmila Lakhani, coordinator of the St. Anne's lunch program.

She told the Richmond News that being able to help more students is an "amazing thing," but to know more youth are struggling with food insecurity is a problem that needs to be addressed quickly.

"I think it's a crisis that we don't want to even see because it's too hard to think about a hungry child," said Lakhani.

"We might not have the flies, we might not have the extended bellies, but not having the malnourishment the way it looks in other countries like Africa doesn't mean children here aren't hungry."

The program originally started when the church heard of a teacher at Hugh Boyd secondary who had been running a lunch program alone for 25 years to ensure students facing food insecurity had something to eat during the day.

Lakhani said the priest of St. Anne's at the time decided to lend a hand and gathered volunteers to make sandwiches daily for the school.

Since then, the program has expanded to include 25 volunteers who take turns making sandwiches from Monday to Friday. They provide sandwiches for 11 schools, averaging about 1,100 sandwiches per week.

Sandwiches are made with dietary and religious restrictions in mind.

Lakhani added the lunch program is made possible by a grant from the federal government to the Richmond School District and donated produce, vegetables and bread from the Richmond Food Bank and Cobs Bread.

"It's thanks to them that hundreds of Richmond youth are able to eat a healthy lunch each day," she said.

But more help is needed with getting more food and having people assist with delivery.

"We've gotten so busy that we can't keep up with the requests and we've had to turn schools away and it absolutely breaks my heart," said Lakhani.

She added that whether it was the pandemic or inflation, the crisis has reached a point where the program at St. Anne's can't meet Richmond's needs.

"We have the volunteers, but it's the supplies, delivery and distribution that we need more of."

St. Anne's Anglican Steveston Church is looking for volunteer drivers to help deliver the sandwiches to schools.

"If we can even have one extra volunteer driver to take these sandwiches to the schools, it will allow us more time in the kitchen to make more sandwiches for kids."

For more information or make a donation, click here. To sign up as a volunteer driver email [email protected]

Got an opinion on this story or any others in Richmond? Send us a letter or email your thoughts or story tips to [email protected]. To stay updated on Richmond news, sign up for our daily headline newsletter.