Five months ago, Sherine Chacko and her husband arrived in Canada from India, dreaming of a new life for their two young sons. They came with their lives’ savings, “but when you convert that money to Canadian dollars, it’s suddenly much less,” Chacko says. Her first visit to Seva Food Bank (which has two locations in Peel Region) came just after she and her husband arrived, when a friend persuaded her it would help her stretch her budget until they could find jobs.

“You feel like your dignity is kind of crushed,” she says. But, during the intake interview meant to ensure eligibility for the food bank, there was no judging or preaching.

“Don’t worry, we’ve all been there,” the staff member told her. Instead of being handed a bag of pre-selected goods and sent away, Chacko was able to “shop” for the things she wanted on the warehouse shelves.

A volunteer accompanied her and helped get the groceries out to transportation. “It’s all about ensuring dignity, because each client at Seva is at his or her most vulnerable,” says Chacko.

That’s why, when a job came up at the food bank, Chacko jumped at the chance to work there. A trained social worker, she got her Ontario certification before arriving in Canada. Now, as kitchen services co-ordinator for Seva, she’s able to aid in the fight against food insecurity for other newcomers, as well as students, the elderly and anyone else struggling to make ends meet.

That’s important in a region that has been wrestling with hunger in recent years. There has been an 18 per cent growth in the number of people accessing food banks in Malton/Peel, points out Britt McKee, chair of the Peel Food Action Council. And that is inextricably tied in with housing affordability issues and low incomes. “Low-income neighbourhoods made up just 2 per cent of the Peel region in 1980,” says McKee. “But that grew to 52 per cent by 2015.”

The area faces some unique challenges, says McKee, mainly associated with its population base and the fact that the three municipalities that make up Peel (Caledon, Brampton and Mississauga) were designed for cars. Public transit is spotty, “so people are limited in what they can access in their own neighbourhoods.” They often have a difficult time getting to grocery stores or food banks and schlepping their purchases home.

In addition, about 50 per cent of the immigrants in Toronto live in Peel region, making it challenging to reach out given the number of languages spoken. Nonetheless, Seva has found some innovative ways to ensure it caters to its diverse clientele, including stocking foods popular with South Asians, Africans, Caribbean and Middle Eastern folk and adopting a culturally sensitive approach to food and its storage.

“For example, we have a lot of Syrian families and meat is a very important part of their diet, but it must be halal,” says Chacko. And for strict vegetarians, putting pizza pops with pepperoni in the same fridge as yogurt might make the yogurt inedible.

Neither does the food bank stop at simply filling people’s bellies. Seva wants to be able to offer access to healthy, nutritious food, rather than just any old food. So as soon as its kitchen gets the OK from the fire marshal, Chacko will begin offering classes in cooking fundamentals.

The cooking classes, says Rasheeda Qureshi, executive director of Seva Food Bank, arose from a volunteer’s experience with an elderly food bank visitor who avoided any food on the shelves that needed preparation. “Some gentle digging turned up the fact that he didn’t want to take those foods because he didn’t know how to cook them,” says Qureshi. “He was a widower who had lost his wife and she had been the cook.”

Elderly widowers are not the only ones who struggle in the kitchen, Qureshi points out. Frequently students and families gravitate to prepared food because they don’t know what to do with raw ingredients or they think it takes too much time to cook. “By learning to make simple meals, they can stretch their food dollars,” she says. “We’ve had a lot of parents who are interested in enrolling their children for classes, too.”

Teaching cooking fundamentals also offers the potential to improve nutrition and long-term health outcomes for many of Seva’s clients, reducing the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart issues. And it may even “improve people’s long-term economic outlook,” says Qureshi. “Culinary skills are employable skills.” And prepared foods are expensive, so learning to cook can “help people stretch the small amount of disposable income they have.”

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Ultimately, both Chacko and Qureshi envision Seva’s combined kitchen and common room as a place to nourish both body and soul. Chacko turns sizable donations that might otherwise go unused into homemade food items. “We might get a huge donation of milk or peppers and we can’t use them all,” she explains. “But if we turn the milk into cottage cheese and dice and freeze the peppers, people will use them up.”

She has also begun serving soup and other comestibles in the common room, giving people a warm place to congregate and chat. “We hope to help break down some of the social isolation that impacts people’s mental health and well-being,” says Qureshi. “It’s always easier to bond with people over food.”