Putting dignity into feeding the poor

By Edward Keenan

How do you help people who cannot afford to feed themselves? In trying to answer that question just over eight years ago in Woodstock, Ont., Stephen Giuliano, BA'82, MTS'94, (Huron) started by shutting down the local food bank.

“Programs that are created to specifically address the needs of the poor almost always end up becoming poor programs,” Giuliano says in his sparsely furnished basement office attached to a United Church. “We need a paradigm shift.” He’s the director of Operation Sharing, an organization that offers a range of community service programs to residents of Oxford County, two hours west of Toronto. For decades, a food bank was among those programs, but Giuliano thought it had become a poor program, and he thought he had a better idea.

Instead of collecting and warehousing food and then giving it to people in need (whether it was the kind of food they wanted or needed or not), Operation Sharing set up a new program, called Food for Friends. People donate at the cash registers of their local grocery stores where cashiers invite them to give a quarter each time they shop. That money funds food cards given to recipients that are good only for non-taxable items (most staples are not taxable, most junk food is), who can shop for themselves.