Donations can be conveniently dropped off at any Essex County Library branch and outside council chambers at the Civic Centre. Donation boxes are also being set out at road depots, Essex-Windsor EMS bases and Essex-Windsor Solid Waste Authority locations.

Food bank usage is spiking this year across the region and province.

Feed Ontario, a collective of hunger relief organizations, released a report this week that found more than 800,000 people across the Province turned to emergency food support between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023, a 38 per cent increase.

Over the same period, 29,000 people accessed the services of the Windsor-Essex Food Bank Association. In all, there were 199,000 visits to local food banks, a 23 per cent increase over the previous year. Of those visits, 64 per cent involved people who had never used a food bank before.