The Executive Director of the Downtown Mission says they're seeing a big increase in the amount of people coming to their food bank in recent months.
The Mission's food bank provides a secure source of food for local families and individuals to help them through a difficult period of their lives.
Rukshini Ponniah-Goulin says a year ago more people were coming to them for meals in the dining hall.
"We're now seeing more people coming to our food bank every day for food for themselves and their family through the food bank," she continued. "These are individuals who have, in most cases, not gone to a food bank before."
Ponniah-Goulin says some of the increase in usage they're seeing is from people who have never gone looking for any type of support before.
She says the price increases for food are hitting everyone hard, and it's impacting their donors as well.
"Obviously our donors too are facing those same increased prices of food, gas, everything, just life in general. So our donations, in terms of food donations, have been lower than typical."
Heading into Thanksgiving, and following that the holiday season, Ponniah-Goulin says they're encouraging anyone out there with the means to do so to put together a food donation drive for them.
She says whether it's an office, a workplace, an organization, a church group or anything else they could really use the help.
"If they could do that we would really appreciate the help because there's so many people, 55 per cent more people, are coming to us than they did last year. And we don't want our shelves to be bare when they come here," Ponniah-Goulin said.
Anyone interested in making a donation to the Downtown Mission can find more information on their website.
- with files from AM800's Rob Hindi