Food hubs provided 62,000 meals for Burnaby families, seniors in 2024

Local nonprofit Burnaby Neighbourhood House (BNH) held its annual general meeting at its Burnaby South location at 4460 Beresford Street in Metrotown on Tuesday, Jan. 21. Four city council members attended the event—Maita Santiago, Richard Lee, Joe Keithley, and Pietro Calendino, who attended as acting mayor. 

Calendino kicked off the event with a speech about BNH’s history and its contributions to the community. He spoke about how BNH CEO and founder Antonia Beck approached the city around 20 years ago shortly after Calendino was first elected to city council to request a space for BNH’s premises. After negotiations between the city and the developer, it was agreed that the developer would donate the 14,000-square-foot space of the BNH premises in Metrotown in exchange for higher density. 

“Now the Burnaby Neighborhood House has become as big as a ministry, and she does all the social services that ministries used to do a long time ago, which they offloaded to nonprofit agencies and to municipalities, which is a shame, really, because we don’t get as much tax as they do,” Calendino said. “For your information, we get about 10% of all the taxes collected by governments, and the other two orders get 90% to 92%, so we provide all the services that you get with a tiny tax collection.” 

During the meeting, BNH board members highlighted the nonprofit’s services throughout the year ending on Aug. 31, 2024, BNH financial information, and the number of beneficiaries. According to a presentation, in 2023-2024, BNH provided emergency food support to more than 1,500 Burnaby residents weekly throughout 2024. It also supplied over 27,500 food hampers through its food hubs, providing more than 62,000 meals to families and seniors. 

In November 2023, the Beacon spoke with BNH program director Kimberly Barwich, who said the food hubs were seeing unprecedented increases in the number of residents requiring food assistance due to inflation and rising living costs, especially seniors. Barwich also said Burnaby seniors are increasingly at risk of homelessness due to high housing costs. 

According to the BNH financial report for 2023-2024, the nonprofit’s revenues over expenses for the year ending Aug. 31, 2024, was $404,919. Wages and benefits were the largest expense of the year at $4,811,033, while program expenses were $1,838,061. 

In comparison, wages and benefits for the previous year, 2022-2023, were $3,833,136, program expenses were $1,480,149, and the revenue over expenses for the year was $162,453. 

After discussing the nonprofit’s financial information and annual report, the second half of the meeting was dedicated to welcoming new board members and recognizing long-time volunteers who have been dedicating their time and effort every week for more than 10 years. According to its annual report, the number of volunteers at BNH declined from 1,210 in 2022-2023 to 758 volunteers in 2023-2024.

This piece was made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.

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