The Current - ‘Make the Season Kind’ with CBC

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

The CBC's annual campaign, Make the Season Kind, to support local food banks is on right now. We'll talk to our producer Anne Penman, who has coordinated the CBC British Columbia food bank fundraiser for 39 years, about the growing need and how you can help. If you want to contribute to your local food bank, go to cbc.ca/kind, or you can donate by texting KIND to 20222.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Wherever you happen to be listening from today, you will be hearing something special on your CBC radio. CBC is asking for your help to make the season kind. This is our annual campaign in support of food banks across this country, and the need when it comes to those food banks is more dire than ever, and it's growing. I've got kids at home.

and with food prices, I can barely afford my rent, so all the money that I'm saving by coming here, I'm able to keep my heat on and my hydro, and it also goes towards my rent. So coming here once a week has been extraordinary helpful. I just found a peanut butter. Do you want a peanut butter? I have a peanut butter. You do. Okay.

Marie is one of the clients picking up groceries at the Maple Ridge Food Bank in BC's Lower of Mainland. Our producer, Anne Penman, spoke with her in the lead-up to today. fundraiser and has coordinated the CBC, British Columbia Food Bank Fundraiser for decades. And good morning. Good morning, Matt. Every year leading up to this day, you visit food banks in and around Vancouver and you talk to the people, the clients who use those food banks.

What did you see and what did you hear this year? Well, in many ways, there are lots of people lined up at food banks still the same as year in, year out at the food bank. I visited, often in the rain, what is different is that the lineups are longer, more young people and more families, and almost 20% of the people that are lined up at food banks here in B.C. are employed. Matt, these are a few of the people that I talk to. My first name is Marie, and my family situation is I'm coming from a divorce, and unfortunately, domestic violence as well. So I'm not able to work at the moment. I'm waiting for a court date and a judge so that then I can get proper child support. And then hopefully I don't have to use the food bank any longer. I have my own situation and my own story like everyone here. But they're amazing people helpful. There's no judgment.

My name is Doe. I'm here every week. I'm retired now. Yeah, and I was a kidney transplant patient. Today, I don't know what they're going to give it to me. Mostly onion, potato, tomato, you might have a bag of rice, cheese, they may have some milk. Yeah, a lot of things. But a lot of people put work on it, right? Yeah, volunteer and, oh, a lot. If people give, it's a kind thing to do. My name is Irina.

I work with neurodivergent kids, and I'm a case manager, and I'm in food bank because my salary is not enough to cover my expenses, and I have to care of my son, who is at school. I spent most of my salary for my rent. Their remaining amount is hardly enough to live in British Columbia. So, Matt, you heard Marie say earlier that everyone here has their own story, and it's so true. She also said that there's no judgment there. Which is amazingly and incredibly important, if you are attending a food bank. The operation of all the food banks that I visited this year were more now like grocery shopping for the clients. In spite of some of this, clients are still weighed down by stigma. One man told me that several of his friends traveled by bus an hour away from their homes, just so no one recognizes them at their local food bank.

You see the lines everywhere in this country. People lined up waiting to access the food bank. As you understand it, how big is the need? Well, Food Bank's Canada says more than 2 million people in Canada used food banks every month in 2025. One and three of them are children. Earlier this week, Food Bank's BC also released a report. their second annual hunger count. And they called the increasing reliance on food banks an unprecedented food security crisis. The demand is so great that some food banks are having to

turn people away. And imagine what that feels like. So what are the food banks doing to try to avoid that? What are they doing to cope with the demand? Well, it depends on the size of the food bank operation in small communities where it's harder to get funding and donations. It's very, very challenging to meet the growing demand. Most provinces have umbrella organizations. They share the food around. If a big city food bank has 10,000 pounds of apples, then they truck them to smaller food banks. David Long is the CEO of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, one of the largest food banks in Canada. Earlier this year, he got a donation of $45,000 worth of apricots from an Okanoggan orchard. And the apricots had been damaged in a hail storm.

So they couldn't be sold. So the Greater Vancouver Food Bank bought a freeze dryer, and they packaged all those apricots. And now they have a shelf life of 10 years, and it's a healthy addition to the food that they distribute every week. So that's, yeah, food that was headed for the landfill. It's quite extraordinary. The food banks are also building a stronger, stronger partnerships in their communities. The Maple Ridge Food Bank here in BC partners with a local Addictions Recovery House nearby. and the men at the recovery house volunteer to work in the warehouse and in the distribution center.

A man named Mason is one of those volunteers. I just like volunteering my time to get back to the people. I'm not the greatest person in the world, but here, you know, people are hungry. So the hardest part is to show up. you know that's that's once you show up you use to drink a cup coffee and maybe get a little snack and then you start to feel good and then you start moving and so if you want to volunteer here I'd suggest it because you'll probably end up going home with a good feeling in your heart you know that you're giving back to the people you know get back to the community that's a great thing

it's so interesting what he said I'm not the greatest person in the world but there he is helping out and volunteering his time there's real humility kind of at the core of that Tell me about some of the other volunteers that you've met over the last month alongside Mason. Oh, Matt, there's so many amazing stories of volunteers, just really heartwarming. While I was visiting the Surrey Food Bank, I noticed a long table near the exit, and the table was covered in books. And here is what I found out about it. Hi, my name's Sahib. I'm a volunteer at the Food Bank, but today I'm coming on behalf of our book club, Read the Room.

I also realize that, you know, being a volunteer here, that if people are struggling with food insecurity, they're probably struggling with other sorts of issues that are, you know, getting in the way of jobs and, you know, educational opportunities. So what we do is we collect books and we just come and we just give them out for free and just take as many as you want. They might not be able to afford books. Maybe the library is far away, things like that. I'm Harneur. For me, kindness is just something easy, something that anyone can do, just helping one person, helping a group of people. Me personally, I was just going to play video games today. But, you know, here I am. If everyone does their part, even just a little bit, it can help. It's like, we can't change the world, but we can at least change some people's lives. And I think

that's all what, you know, kindness is about, just giving back and not expecting anything. Kindness is something anyone can do. You and Penman have been doing your part for a long time. How many years have you been doing this? Oh, Matt. It's year number 39. And because of that, we've talked about this on the program before, but you were awarded the King Charles Coronation Medal for your exceptional efforts to combat food insecurity within your community. In that time, in those efforts, how have you seen this change? How have you seen the role of food banks change over time?

Yeah, it's changed remarkably. And I would say mostly for the good, notwithstanding that we need more food banks, back in the 80s and for a few decades there was a lot of debate about whether citizens and community leaders should support food banks or even encourage them and that it just let the government off the hook or also that people needed to pull up their bootstraps and earn a living. And there are still people out there who hold that school of thought. It was really only about 10, 20 years ago at the most that governments began to acknowledge that they needed to help support food banks. So on the one hand, over these past several decades, it's been really striking and very moving to see food banks grow to meet the need. But at the same time, it is truly disheartening that we haven't figured out how to fix the growing problem of food insecurity in such a rich country like Canada.

Each year I meet more people, more families relying on food banks. Are there any stories from those people that you meet that stand out? Oh, yeah. This year, every year, I'm just blown away by the stories that people are willing to share. I met a woman from Brazil. She had two small kids. Her husband works full time. And she can't work because the daycare costs too much for her to even bother having a job. And get this, she's a physician. She needs to upgrade her English. She's working on it. And she also has to do two more years of education to qualify to practice here. So she's one of the people that. stood out for me. I met a woman on disability who wants to work, but she can't work the number of hours that employers need her to work. A man who worked as a garbage man, he fell off a garbage truck at work, and he's slowly rehabbing. He's on disability income. So there he is at the food bank for now. This is a day, as I mentioned, that across the country, CBC stations are plugging back into their communities to help raise awareness around food insecurity, but also raise

money and donations for people who rely on those food banks and people can get more information through their local station or on the website at cbc.ca.ca slash kind. You have been quarterbacking the efforts in British Columbia. How much money is CBC B.C. hoping to raise today? Matt, you know, we never set a goal and we just encourage our CBC audience to give what they can and they are so generous every year. Last year, when it was all said and done, we raised a record $2.4 million for food banks here in BC.

But we know these are hard times for a lot of people. And we also know that while fewer people donate to charities these days, those who are able to donate are donating more. So we're just hoping for whatever people can share with us, and we in turn will hand it over to the food banks. This campaign, as we said, is called Make the Season Kind. With that in mind, who are you giving the last word to on this today? Well, one thing I did after clients at the Food Banks told me their personal stories,

I asked them how they exercise kindness in their lives. So you'll have to have a listen to this. It's a great reminder that kindness is universal. And I might say that kindness is something that we need a lot more of in this world. You're absolutely right. And you have modeled that in the work that you have done in helping to raise these funds and awareness for food insecurity in your province. And thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. Kindness means being helpful, non-judgmental. Everybody wants to be loved.

Everybody wants people to be kind and respectful to them. So when you do this to other people, it comes back to you in multiple folds. So that's my mantra. Kindness makes the world go around. Kindness is necessary, really you're rich for in middle class, anything like that. We all need, kindness of some kind of generosity of others to survive? To be kind, I try to not judge others, and I try to help anybody whatever way I can. Even like other homeless people, you know, I feel a lot for that. I just, I try to, you know, give them little snacks and things like that. Just being compassionate or empathetic towards other people.

When you can have that kind of conscientious self-awareness of what you say and what you do and how it affects people that kindness begets kindness begets kindness begets kindness if you want to contribute to your local food bank you just heard about the need there you can go to cbc.ca slash kind or you can donate by text text kind to 202222 that's kind kind to 20222 this has been the current podcast you can hear our show monday to friday on cbc radio one at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.