Montreal non-profit teaches children how to make healthy meals

According to a 2022 estimate by Breakfast Club of Canada, one in three, or nearly 2 million children in this country, are at risk of going to school hungry.

With the current cost of living crisis that has raised the price of groceries by 2.4 per cent over the last year, Share the Warmth in Montreal is hoping to provide students with the necessary tools and knowledge to make healthy and filling meals with their ‘Boîte à Lunch’ after school program.

Share the Warmth is a non-profit in Pointe-Saint-Charles dedicated to helping children and providing healthy and fresh food for everyone, especially school-aged children. They mostly work with elementary schools in the neighborhood (Charlemagne, St. Gabriel, and Jeanne LeBer schools) due to their proximity, and aim to provide services to children coming from food insecure households.

Their ‘Boîte a Lunch’ program is run in partnership with The Depot Community Food Center, in Notre-Dame-de-Grace (NDG).

Thw initiative is a 10-week, in-house activity and it’s free and open to grade 5 and 6 students.

“Everyone really loves it,” said Kimber Fellows, Director of Philanthropy and Communications at Share the Warmth. “The kids like to get dirty, they’re really proud when their parents come to pick them up because they’re bringing something home that their parents can try too. So it’s really exciting for them to be able to share what they’ve made with their families, and we’ve had a really positive response.”

Fellows says the activity, as well as the food bank, tries as much as possible to provide healthy and culturally appropriate food for their clientele. This means taking into account children’s different backgrounds and cooking meals from different countries.

Share the Warmth also started a new program in its pilot year, the ‘Afterschool Club,’ to better help manage food insecurity for children in the neighbourhood. The center now welcomes students from grades one to six coming from for low-income, food insecure households afterschool and provide them with a homemade, healthy snack. They can also get help with their homework.

Fellows hopes they will be able to expand the program in future years.

She believes food insecurity for schoolchildren is indicative of larger household issues. She says Share the Warmth is therefore focused on providing support for the entire family through their newly renovated food bank. From fresh produce to non-perishables, the organization is dedicated to delivering a dignified grocery shopping experience for people coming to the center.

“It’s pretty important to look at the family as a unit, not just the children,” stated Fellows. “I think we talk a lot about kids being hungry in school, but they come from families or households where people are making their lunches for them.”

In the past three years, the center went from serving 900 people monthly to 2,800. Fellows says 30 per cent of their food bank users are children.

Alomdor Ali, a Montreal resident, believes in the importance of services such as Share the Warmth.

“It’s plenty for needy people. Those who are living in this country as an asylum seeker, they have no jobs, this is [a] benefit for them” said Ali.

The Breakfast Club of Canada reports that the Liberal government promised in 2021 to invest $1 billion over the next five years in order to implement a national school food program. The government’s budget in April 2024 showed that they hope to deliver meals to up to 400,000 children a year.

“What we do here is critical,” said Fellows. “It’s a basic human right, every person in Quebec deserves healthy nutritious food, especially children. At the moment one in five children in Montreal is in a food insecure households, and we see that at our food bank every day.”