While more than one in five children in Quebec are affected by food insecurity, a community kitchen project run by the organization Le Pignon bleu cannot move forward due to a lack of government funding.
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The project was launched more than two years ago with the aim of feeding children in the Quebec region, with a budget of $3 million to start work, but for almost a year everything has been at a standstill because of the 2nd Millions of dollars demanded from the federal government are still overdue.
The gym-sized space is therefore virtually empty, while building materials and brand new equipment lie unused.
“We don’t want to throw stones,” says the head of the Pignon Bleu fundraising campaign, Alain Rioux. We received a lot of help. Jean-Yves Duclos got us to the right program. Unfortunately we are waiting for the answer.”
Le pignon bleu provides meals and snacks to almost 10,000 children in 19 schools.
This year the director even had to turn down requests for help from 8 schools because demand has never been greater.
“We have more and more young people who go to school without breakfast, they don’t get lunch,” says Director General Roseline Roussel. It’s the schools that prepare lunch, we also see friends stealing from each other.”
“These are situations that we no longer want to see in the region,” she adds. We hope to have news as soon as possible.”
The huge community kitchen in the Saint-Roch district could feed up to 25,000 children within five years, a situation Ms Roussel describes as “heartbreaking”.
“We have the expertise and knowledge, but we just lack a production site to be able to provide the desired amount of snacks,” she says.
In the office of Jean-Yves Duclos we assure that the minister “is working closely with Pignon Bleu so that its project is integrated into the federal program as quickly as possible and we hope that the organization receives the necessary funds to complete the construction” .
As soon as funds are available, construction will resume.
– In collaboration with Edith Hammond