EDITORIAL: Assist the needy

SOME organisations providing assistance to needy persons in Barbados, are meeting difficulty in providing their clients with essential food items during the current COVID-19 pandemic, which has left a number of people unemployed or with limited resources.

Amongst these organisations is the HIV/AIDS Food Bank. Current reports from this very paper suggest that the demand for food supplies from the Food Bank well outstrips what the organisation currently has to offer.

Stacia Whittaker, Manager of the HIV/AIDS Food Bank, stated: “We are already coming from a place where we are dealing with vulnerable groups to begin with, even before this crisis started. Now, with the crisis, that has manifested itself even more, in that we are seeing more clients that wouldn’t have been on the Food Bank’s assistance programme. So we are seeing more of them now coming and asking for assistance. With that being said, it has been more challenging than before and with everything that is going on, the donations are not matching the numbers that we are seeing coming in. So obviously then, we’re having to stretch our resources as much as possible.”

Whittaker further noted that some clients have been returning to the Food Bank more often than before, since their income is also now reduced.

“Even the clients that might have tried to do a little work here or there to make ends meet, they are not having that, so they are trying to come because we have a system where we try to assist once a month. We have our criteria set out, where we would assist a client more than once if they fit the criteria, but now with COVID, we are realising that the average client that would have only qualified for once a month, is now qualifying to be twice a month because they have no other means at all,” Whittaker stressed.

Need time to take stock and replenish

Other organisations such as the Salvation Army have had some assistance from corporate Barbados in making ends meet, but even that organisation is also seeing an increase in clients who have needs and they have noted that they will need some time to take stock and replenish, so that they can assist more persons, via their services.

“We have asked persons to come on the days specified according to the alphabet, by their names, but persons have been coming every day. As a matter of fact, we had to turn away some persons this morning because all of the food that we had has been depleted, so we have to restock. So we are asking for contributions from different places and we will purchase some more next week and then start back in probably another week or two, to give ourselves sometime as we have to replenish,” Divisional Commander of the Salvation Army, Major Darrell Wilkinson, recently noted.

There are other organisations out there such as the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness, community groups and even church groups that are doing their best, along with the Welfare Department, Government’s Barbados Vulnerable Family Survival Programme and other governmental agencies, to assist the needy. However, the need in Barbados seems to be great and as such, those who have more should see where they can assist those who genuinely have less. Now is the time to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, and to reach out and lend a helping hand wherever possible.

Barbados Advocate

Mailing Address:
Advocate Publishers (2000) Inc
Fontabelle, St. Michael, Barbados

Phone: (246) 467-2000
Fax: (246) 434-2020 / (246) 434-1000