Wednesday, February 4, 2026
St. Andrew’s Musings
Kaitlyn Pipe | Church Building Manager
Last year the Neighbourhood Food Program launched, and I wanted to take time to give you an update on this amazing initiative at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian. When I took the position of then Executive Assistant/ Office Manager at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian, Marty explained his goal of creating initiatives to combat food insecurities. I brought an idea to him about reaching out to the local food bank to see if we could get onto their list of distribution partners. In November of 2024, I met with the Waterloo Food Bank and learned more about the organization. Six months later we applied to be a partner and anxiously waited 3 more months to find out if we were approved. After receiving approval, brainstorming happened to figure out how we could make it work for us.
My goal was to have the program run either on a weekday evening or weekend to help fill the gap as most other partners were running daytime during the week. My goal was to help those falling into the working poor category. With that I approached Nexus to become a partner which they happily jumped at. With the help of Sarah Holmes from Nexus we were able to organize volunteers from both churches and start to serve 40 families in October 2025. We started slow but have as of January 2026 filled all 40 appointments every week along with take some walk-in appointments.
Things are working smoothly and over the past 4 months we have worked out kinks and are now running like a well oiled machine. Food including fresh produce, milk, eggs and meat are dropped off on Friday mornings and then organized and handed out Sunday afternoons in Iona Hall. If you’d still like to volunteer, we can always accommodate more help especially on Friday mornings to accept the delivery. I want to thank everyone who has helped and supported this program. If you have any items at home that you don’t want or want to pick up some items for the program, we welcome the donations. Items that are on high demand are personal hygiene items, toiletries, pasta, baby diapers and formula. Please reach out to me if you have any questions.