A town-wide food drive is being held in Lincoln this weekend as more and more people are looking for help feeding their families.
Village of Hope Niagara and Calvary Gospel Church in Beamsville are hosting the food drive on Saturday May 28th from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. with residents being asked to put any food donations on their porch.
Executive Director Cheryl Keddy Scott tells CKTB they have declared an emergency situation, and are taking swift action to help community members in need.
"We are reaching out to everyone to help us. This is a Niagara-wide situation. We are seeing people who used to donate $50 to help us, now they are coming in, saying I make $18/hr and by the time I pay my rent there is nothing left. We are seeing a large amount of desperateness."
The agency is also launching a pay what you can dinner service starting this Thursday May 26th from 4PM-6PM at its location in Jordan Station at 2540 S Service Road (at 15th).
Officials say they are trying to keep up with a surge of new client registrations, as well as the 1500 people they already assist with food.
They say last year 36 families could no longer afford to live in Lincoln, and had to move, and this year 17 more families have left.
Clients are invited to access the agency's referral system.
"Each month over 1500 people in our community are impacted by the relief work we do. For the third time in three years we're again expanding the size of our foodbank room. With surging need, we're expanding our services to now include bi-weekly client visits to our food room, and increasing our deliveries to client residences of those lacking reliable, affordable transportation. With school ending, and children at home, access to healthy food is even more critical. We're again covering 50% of costs for children of our program to enrol in summer sport/education programs."