Food insecurity goes up in the summer among kids in Toronto. A new city program aims to help
1 in 4 Toronto families is food insecure, says city's manager of poverty reduction office
The school year has come to an end, and for a lot of kids in Toronto who depend on their school food programs for meals, that means an increased struggle with food insecurity.
On Monday, the city of Toronto launched a CampTO Nutrition Program aimed at helping families feed their children through the summer. The initiative will provide morning snacks to up to 56,000 children at 89 designated camp locations across the city.
"We know that kids or some families who may be accessing food through a student nutrition program in their school, can't access those programs during the summer," Toronto's manager of the poverty reduction office, Bryony Halpin, told CBC.
"So programs like CampTO Nutrition is trying to improve access to nutritious snacks for kids who are attending city summer camps and are not getting access to food programs in their school community at that time."
Halpin said child and family poverty has "sharply increased" in the city. She said that about one in four Toronto families is food insecure, and up to 60 per cent of families might be experiencing poverty in some areas of the city.
"Food insecurity has been rising in Toronto in recent years at pretty alarming rates, and this is due to the increasing cost of living," she said. "Food-insecure households often choose between paying for food or paying for other needs like rent. Having a job is often not enough."
Halpin said there are many impacts on kids dealing with food insecurity, including their capacity to learn in the classroom, their behaviour, long-term health outcomes, and social stigma.
CampTO Nutrition Program is targeted to reach families in high-need communities, she said, with participating camps located in Free Centres and neighbourhoods with a high percentage of low-income households. The program is expected to run until late August.
Organization provides meals for students during summer
Susan Wright says she's "thrilled" at the city's CampTO Nutrition Program, and hopes the kids can be supported with everything they need.
Wright is the founder of summerlunch+, a non-profit organization that provides meal kits, food education and cooking classes, for students across Ontario in the summer.
She says the summer months put additional pressure on families who rely on school food meals during the school year, leading parents to make "tough choices".
"Food is becoming so unaffordable for many that folks have to make tough choices sometimes between calories and nutrition," she told CBC's Metro Morning on Thursday.
This year, summerlunch+ had spaces for 500 families, and 122 families are currently on the wait list, she said.
Habeeb Madani, who once benefited from summerlunch+ and now works for the organization as a food packer, said the program helped him and his family.
"When my parents were off to work, and I was the only one taking care of my siblings, I wouldn't know what to make, so the program has really helped me to make healthier food," he told CBC's Metro Morning on Thursday.
Madani, who's now 18, said he started using summerlunch+ when he was eight years old. He got hired by the program three years ago.
"It feels very full circle knowing that I'm giving back to what was very influential to me," he said.
Food bank CEO says it's 'heartbreaking'
In November, Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank released a report that showed that more than one in 10 Toronto residents rely on food banks. In 2024, there were 3.5 million visits to food banks, three times as many visits as before the pandemic. One in three food bank users are children.
Neil Hetherington, CEO of Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank, said food insecurity among kids also tends to rise in the summer because parents have additional expenses.
"You've got to figure out child care opportunities. Are you sending that child to camp? Are you providing child care opportunities through nannies and through babysitting? Those are additional expenses for a family who is already food insecure and is already stretched," Heatherington said.
He said he's seeing a lot of parents bringing their children to food banks.
"One of the most heartbreaking things for me is to see children in the line at the Daily Bread Food Bank who are excited about the prospect of coming to the food bank today. It means that they'll be able to choose some food that they want to eat for dinner tonight," he said.
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With files from CBC's Metro Morning