How grocery gift cards could transform holiday giving – Macleans.com

A foundation in Calgary has gone from offering food to offering the ability to buy it. The first signs suggest that it serves families better.

A trip to the local food bank is a Christmas tradition for many Canadian families. Parents drive to the store with their children to buy rewards of non-perishable goods to drop off at the local food bank, along with all the preparations for their own dinners, with the intention of teaching their children the importance of giving back.

But for many families on the receiving end, this ritual is neither life-affirming nor uplifting. Some travel long distances just to wait in hour-long lines for food that may not meet their religious, cultural or health needs. Others cannot pay for transportation. For many, the experience is stigmatized. “When you have just got things delivered, you are expected to just take what they give you,” said a single mother of two who participated in a study conducted by the Calgary-based charity I Can For Kids Foundation. “When can you go out and [grocery shop and meal plan] it just makes you feel more human. “

After distributing food baskets to families across the province for five years, I Can For Kids Foundation It recently went from a food aid charity to a financial empowerment charity, providing $ 50 grocery gift cards to thousands of families with the goal of targeting the root cause of food insecurity: lack of income. “We are not saying [gift cards] they are the answer, ”says Bobbi Turko, co-founder and CEO of the foundation. “What we are saying is that it is a much more dignified and inclusive approach to supporting households that are experiencing food insecurity than a food basket model can be.”

Replacing food baskets with purchasing power is part of a broader rethinking of how to address hunger in Canada, as rates of food insecurity rise, while traditional means of addressing it (supply-dependent food banks and Canadians’ ability to give) they struggle to stay up.

The innovative model in Calgary, although modest in scope, could shed light on the feasibility of more comprehensive solutions, such as the basic income proposed by the NDP and the Green Party during the last election. To help document the experiences of people who have accessed the grocery gift card program, 37 recipients participated in a study conducted by the University of Calgary Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, and the O’Brien Institute of Public Health.

The full results will be published in the new year, but preliminary findings suggest that providing gift cards to low-income families alleviates financial stress, restores customers’ dignity and autonomy, and improves diet quality. “There is a perception that people are poor because they have made bad decisions and therefore we cannot trust that they will make good decisions,” says Turko. But the study’s early findings suggest otherwise: Parents equipped with gift cards became more likely to buy nutritious foods, as their children’s exposure and interest in eating fresh fruits and vegetables increased.

(I can for the children)

The study also included 17 partner agencies (social workers, social workers and community facilitators) who act as intermediaries between the foundation and the beneficiaries to ensure that those who need it most receive support. The laborious process of picking up and dropping off the food baskets was often left to these agency partners, but it was so time consuming that it diverted them from their primary responsibilities of offering assistance and support. The switch to grocery gift cards eased this burden: Internal evaluations of the program found the model to be a more logistically efficient way for the agency. partners to support their customers.

A heightened sense of empowerment was observed in nearly all recipients who participated in the study, says Yun Lee, one of the principal investigators at the University of Calgary. Lee is on the verge of tears when he recalls the gratitude of a mother for being able to buy fruit for her children to eat on a road trip, and another family who fulfilled their children’s wish for s’mores while shopping for a fruit trip. camp. “The autonomy to choose the foods they put on their shopping cards has allowed parents to create special moments,” says Lee.

As a demonstration of what additional income can provide, the study results are compelling. The foundation plans to donate $ 67,000 in gift cards during the month of December, all purchased at a discounted rate offered by participating stores: Co-op, Real Canadian Superstore, Safeway, Save-On-Foods and Sobeys. As the organization works through a long waiting list of families waiting to receive cards, and the results of the initiative become known, Turko is optimistic that Canadians will begin to reconsider their charitable giving in the coming years.

“Donating food makes the donor feel good; it doesn’t always make the recipient feel good, ”says Turko. “I hope that the results of the study open a broader conversation around poverty reduction and that people understand a little more what people experiencing poverty and food insecurity are going through.”