Newark Neighbours benefits from community gardens

Cindy Grant knows that many families in Niagara-on-the-Lake are experiencing food insecurity.

“Currently we have about 80 families that are registered with us, representing 150 individuals,” said Grant, a volunteer at Newark Neighbours who manages its food bank. “Since January, we have registered 15 families. There are more people in Niagara-on-the-Lake that we could be helping that have just not come to us yet.”

Newark Neighbours has been in operation for about 50 years and has had a thrift store and a food bank for most of that time, she said. “All the profits from the thrift store go into our food bank.”

Newark Neighbours is a member of Feed Ontario, a food bank network, and Feed Niagara, which is made up of the 10 food banks in the Niagara Region.

Three gardens donate produce to Newark Neighbours. The garden behind the Community Centre is tended to by a group of volunteers. Another community garden on Niven Road will be donating two plots to families registered with Newark Neighbours, and produce from two more plots will also be donated to the food bank.

Lifepointe Bible Church recently announced that produce from its new plots will also be donated to Newark Neighbours.

“We are going to be well and truly stocked with vegetables all summer,” said Grant, who started volunteering at Newark Neighbours one summer day in 2015 when she noticed how busy the thrift store was.

“It was chaos there that day and I said, ‘oh, I have a couple of hours, let me help.’ I started volunteering here and one thing led to another and I got asked to sit on the board. Then I became the food bank manager and haven’t been able to leave ever since,” she laughed.

Helping others is a large part of Grant’s life. Besides her work at Newark Neighbours, she is the treasurer for the Niagara-on-the-Lake Community Palliative Care Service and is on the board of directors for both the Niagara North Family Health Team and the Niagara-on-the-Lake Horticultural Society.

She is also one of the Nyanyas of Niagara, a branch of over 240 grandmother groups across Canada raising money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign. Funds provide food, housing, school fees, grief counselling and more to grandmothers raising their grandchildren orphaned from AIDS in 15 sub-Saharan African countries.

“Volunteering keeps me busy,” said Grant. “And I need to stay busy. It’s my way of giving back to this community. This community is so amazing, generous, active and engaged. I had a busy career for almost 40 years and didn’t give back to any community that I lived in, so this is my way of paying forward and staying busy and active.”

About 40 volunteers work at Newark Neighbours. “We are completely volunteer run. The volunteers are the lifeblood of the organization and we literally couldn’t do it without them,” said Grant. “We are so grateful for our volunteers.”

According to the Newark Neighbours website, “all our food bank clients must be residents of the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, whose boundaries include the Old Town, Virgil, Niagara-on-the-Green, St. Davids, Queenston and everywhere in between.” Registration information is also available on their website.

Vicky Downes is the lead volunteer for the community centre gardens and the two plots on Niven Road.

“I enjoy helping,” she said. “I love gardening. I met wonderful people in the past 20-plus years I have been in town. You get wrapped up into things — just connecting and finding opportunities and wanting to be a part of all of that excitement.”

Downes works with nine “wonderful volunteers, and we are a team. I do the organizing and we just work together and make sure the garden is taken care of, food goes where it needs to go, and food is picked when it needs to be picked. It is a team effort.”

While Newark Neighbours is a primary recipient of the gardens’ produce, The Farmworker Hub has also benefited. “We also put food on the farm stand inside the library for any resident in town at no charge, just donations if you wish,” said Downes.