Bolton Rotary donates $10,000 in gift cards to Caledon Community Services

April 20, 2023 · 0 Comments

Rotarians helping to meet unprecedented need for food at The Exchange

By Zachary Roman

Each week at the Rotary Club of Bolton’s meetings, there’s a guest speaker.

The club has had speakers visit to talk about everything from electric cars to bringing medical supplies to Ukraine.

At a recent Rotary Club of Bolton meeting, Caledon Community Services came by to make a presentation to Bolton Rotarians on the unprecedented demand they are seeing at The Exchange, Caledon’s source for food and social support.

Karen Fast, Bolton Rotary’s Communications Lead, said CCS explained it often gets big donations around Thanksgiving and Christmas but at other times, donations can be slower. With grocery prices and the number of people needing food support skyrocketing, CCS made an appeal to Bolton Rotary for support.

“We thought we would do $10,000 now and again in September… we are really careful about when we give… it’s at the most needed times that we find (donations) are the most valuable,” said Fast.

The donation was made in the form of $25 gift cards to grocery stores, and Fast said it was pretty interesting to see that many gift cards all laid out on a table. By giving gift cards in this denomination, CCS is able to best divide them up depending on an individual family’s need.

Fast explained some of Bolton Rotary’s members actually volunteer stocking shelves at The Exchange, while others collect food from bins at grocery stores and deliver it to The Exchange.

“One thing I like about The Exchange is the clients feel like they’re going to the grocery store… they can go and pick stuff off the shelves,” said Fast. She also likes that The Exchange provides things like fresh fruit and vegetables, often from local farms.

In an interview in December, Caledon Community Services’ (CCS) Chief Development Officer Mariia Kupriianova said the need for food support in Caledon was greater than ever before and the need was expected to continue increasing throughout 2023.

“It’s horrible that food insecurity is becoming a buzzword, it is very bad news,” said Kupriianova. “Having to make the impossible choice between a warm home or food on your table… It’s becoming reality for so many families. Some of these families never needed our support before… they never thought that they might need this support.”