The manager of the Cochrane Food Bank and its fundraising arm, the Neighbour-to-Neighbour Thrift Store says her staff and volunteers are dealing with a lot of unnecessary issues.
Ardis Proulx says one of them has its roots in why the outdoor donation bins for the thrift store are only open six hours a day.
“Because we’ve had incidents of people defecating in it,” she states, “we’ve had people sleeping in it overnight, starting fires, creating a very large mess.”
Overnight Monday, sometime broke in and threw a lot of the bin’s contents around the parking lot.
Another issue involves the quality of donations. Proulx says she suspects people get rid of garbage by donating it, instead of using other means get rid of it.
“This has really been challenging for us, because we’re ending up with a lot of items that are broken; a lot of human bodily fluids; things like this that are not safe for staff and volunteers to be going through.”
Below is audio of Proulx outlining a wide range of issues she hopes to curb.
