Latest news with #UGM
Global News
4 days ago
- General
- Global News
Surging demand for B.C. charity's food hampers a ‘startling trend'
A Vancouver charity is sounding the alarm about growing food insecurity as it sees a surge in demand for its emergency food hamper service. The Union Gospel Mission launched its food hamper program early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the program, eligible clients can pick up a package of things like pasta, sauce, beans and other pantry staples, along with a grocery store gift card, up to four times a year. 1:58 Food bank demand still surging UGM spokesperson Nick Wells said in 2020 the program handed out 1,200 hampers, but that the need has since grown exponentially. Story continues below advertisement 'This year, as of June, we've already given out 4,200, so we're on pace to crack more than 8,000 this year, which is a startling trend,' he said. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy 'I think it really speaks to the kind of food insecurity and the rising food costs that we're witnessing not just here in Vancouver, but across the province.' The common refrain from clients, Wells said, is that the rising cost of living has increasingly put healthy food out of reach. He said the UGM sees families of all sizes and types coming in, from single parents to multi-child families to grandparents raising their grandchildren like Hazel Arnold. 'We were homeless for like two and a half years at Oppenheimer Park, and without UGM and being allowed to shower here and get food … you just can't make ends meet without this place,' she said. Arnold, who cares for her 10-year-old and 16-year-old granddaughters, has been using the hamper service for about two years. The trio were living in an RV until they got housing last fall, but still face a constant battle to stay afloat. 0:34 BC SPCA pet food bank in need of donations The hampers, she said, have been a lifeline. Story continues below advertisement 'It's all high protein. There's a lot of beans, tuna, spaghetti sauce, there's usually treats in there for the kids, fresh canned fruit, porridge, rice, spaghetti. There is a variety of food, a great amount of essentials that you can use to make a lot meals,' Arnold said. 'I try to make it last at least a week and a half, two weeks, so that's with porridge every morning, rice, you know plain rice with some soy sauce, throw a can of vegetables in there that they provide, and then spaghetti, make spaghetti sauce and freeze it and do the best I can.' Even limiting the hampers to one every three months for clients, Wells said the UGM spends about $10,000 per month on food. 'It's great that we're able to help people, but I think it also speaks to just how much day-to-day expenses are hurting people,' he said. People interested in helping can donate through the UGM website.
Vancouver Sun
4 days ago
- General
- Vancouver Sun
'Headed in the wrong direction': More B.C. adults, children are going hungry
Hazel Arnold knows a thing or two about feeding a family. She raised 11 children, four of her own and seven nieces and nephews she adopted after her sister died. And the 63-year-old is now raising two granddaughters, ages 10 and 16. But feeding young mouths is an increasingly hard thing to do with grocery prices rising and inflation pushing up the cost of nearly everything in a city that's already famous for being expensive. Arnold, like many low-income British Columbians, more frequently turns to charities to help fill her cupboards. For the past couple of years, she has been picking up food hampers from Union Gospel Mission in the Downtown Eastside. Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. 'In the hampers, we get pasta, rice, canned vegetable, canned fruit, spaghetti sauce, mixed vegetables, soups, peanut butter, tuna, baked beans, split peas. Everything is high protein. So, it makes you feel like you're not really chintzing out on your kids,' she said. 'Without that program, I don't know where me and my grandkids would be.' UGM started the food hamper program in 2020 to help Downtown Eastside residents get groceries while social distancing during the early days of the pandemic. It gave away about 150 hampers a month that year, primarily to families. The need for the hampers has grown every year, with more than 330 handed out each month in 2023 and 2024. That has more than doubled this year, with 4,100 distributed by the end of June — or more than 680 a month. 'There's food insecurity, cost-of-living expenses … Raising kids is a lot of money, too,' said UGM spokesperson Nick Wells. 'But food insecurity is not just a Downtown Eastside problem. It is everywhere across the province and further.' Visits to food banks across B.C. have nearly doubled since 2019, and one out of every third person who relies on the service is a child, says the organization Food Banks B.C. 'We're still clearly headed in the wrong direction,' said the Food Banks B.C. executive director, Dan Huang-Taylor. 'There is a continued demand for hunger relief services. … British Columbians are going hungry just to get by.' UGM distributes hampers from its Women and Families Centre, where it has a room filled with supplies. Besides pantry items like oatmeal or lentils, there are baby items, feminine hygiene products, and gift cards for fresh fruits and vegetables from a nearby market. Arnold, who is unable to work due to past injuries, said the program boosts her dignity, allowing her to make homemade food, such as peanut butter cookies or apple crisp, for her granddaughters. 'People like myself need that. Without that, we'd really have nothing to look forward to. We'd probably slip into a deep depression,' she said. The Métis woman raised 11 kids on a farm in Saskatchewan before she and her partner decided a few years ago to buy a motor home and move to Vancouver. A series of life events, though, including the death of her partner, led to financial challenges and eventually homelessness. While living with her two grandchildren in an RV beside Oppenheimer Park, she went to UGM for showers, meals, programs, and to pray for help. 'I was lost. I was completely beside myself because everything that could go wrong went wrong.' Each client can only pick up a UGM hamper once every three months, so Arnold tries to make the food last by, for example, making a big pot of spaghetti sauce and freezing it in small containers. For the past nine months, she and her granddaughters have lived in social housing run by a non-profit, paying rent deemed to be 'affordable' compared to Vancouver's prices. But she still finds it prohibitively high. Her income includes welfare, a child supplement and a rent rebate, but after paying $1,875 for rent and her utility bills, she runs out of money for groceries before the end of each month. Having the apartment is better for her grandchildren. But financially, she said bluntly, 'I was better off homeless.' 'It's really hard to budget when there's nothing to budget with,' she said. 'It's sad.' UGM's Wells knows there is a clear need for more food hampers, so someone like Arnold can get one more than once every three months. But the non-profit is doing what it can, he said, with its limited funding and supplies. It spends about $10,000 a month on food hampers, primarily funded through donations . Food insecurity, he argued, 'needs to be urgently addressed by all levels of government.' While the province and Ottawa have pledged support for school meal programs , other ways to access healthy food must also be funded — especially in the summer when kids are not in class, Wells said. Meaningful change, Wells said, includes governments building more affordable housing, so families have more money to spend on groceries. 'One in three kids across the country are going hungry or not sure where their next meals may come from. That's a huge stress for the kids. That's a huge stress for the parents too — dealing with that kind of emotional baggage of 'How do I provide for my family?'' The hampers help to address the intergenerational trauma of parents who grew up without enough to eat and now worry how they will feed their own children, Wells added. At the Greater Vancouver Food Bank, 4,800 children were registered as clients between October and December, 2024. From January to March of this year, the most recent statistics available, that jumped by 20 per cent to 5,800 children, said communications manager Taylor McLean. The 111 food-distribution agencies that are members of Food Banks B.C. have experienced increased demand in 2025, and at the same time roughly half of them had a 'notable drop' in both food and financial donations this year, Huang-Taylor said. 'You can really start to appreciate how hard it is to sustain the demand for services in those conditions,' he said. 'We're in a cost-of-living crisis. An increasing number of people just cannot keep up with the cost of life's essentials.' Demand is high in rural communities where groceries tend to be more expensive due to transportation costs. In urban centres, help is being sought by a range of people, including residents with high rents and new arrivals to Canada. The top reasons people cite for relying on food banks, Huang-Taylor said, are grocery prices, low wages, and the cost of housing. Families and the working poor are among the fastest-growing client groups, as they will often cut their food budget so they can pay other bills. 'The profile of the food bank user has changed,' he said. 'The people who need to access services are our co-workers, friends and family.' Solutions, Huang-Taylor said, include the province improving social assistance rates and disability benefits, and boosting the minimum wage to a living wage; municipalities having more community gardens so people can grow food; and citizens and corporations continuing to donate to food banks. lculbert@
CTV News
12-07-2025
- General
- CTV News
Union Gospel Mission hosts 26th annual summer barbecue
Thousands of Downtown Eastside residents made their way to Oppenheimer Park Saturday for Union Gospel Mission's 26th annual summer barbecue. (UGM) Thousands of Downtown Eastside residents made their way to Oppenheimer Park Saturday for Union Gospel Mission's 26th annual summer barbecue. 'It's a chance for the community to kind of come together, maybe get introduced to some of our services, and build connections, too,' said UGM spokesperson Nick Wells. The charity was expecting 3,000 people and prepared to serve as many as 4,000, Wells said. Volunteers cooked 4,000 hamburgers and 4,000 smokies, prepared 800 pounds of coleslaw, freezies and more – 'everything to make sure that people go away happy and fed,' he said. 'People who are experiencing poverty or are unhoused may not be able to enjoy the kind of simple things we take for granted in summer,' Wells said. 'This is a chance for people to get together, for kids to play on a bouncy castle, to play in a ball pit, to get cotton candy.' For adults, it serves as an opportunity to take their minds off the pressures of day-to-day life and just enjoy a summer day. While the summer barbecue and other large meals – like those UGM serves for Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving – are some of the charity's most visible efforts, Wells said the organization also serves about 750 meals a day across Metro Vancouver. UGM also connects clients with donated clothing, resources for addiction recovery, job training and more. Large events like the summer barbecue are a way for people to get introduced to UGM staff and volunteers, build trust and ask for help with their specific needs, Wells said. He referenced "Mind the Gap," a recent literature review conducted by UGM and the University of British Columbia that looked at four different care models that could be implemented and expanded in the Downtown Eastside. One thing they all had in common, he said, was that they relied on a 'sense of community and togetherness' to help build connections with people in need. 'That's what an event like this does,' Wells said. 'This is a case of our continuum of care in action, really.'
SBS Australia
11-07-2025
- General
- SBS Australia
Family split threatens Indonesian migrant workers
LISTEN TO SBS Indonesian 11/07/2025 13:08 Indonesian Behind this work is the potential for considerable problems for the families of migrant workers in the homeland. There is interesting research from Prof. Doktor Sukamdi, senior researcher at the Center for Population and Policy Studies, Gadjah Mada University (UGM) Yogyakara, on how the negative impact of migrant workers, on their families especially their children, who live in hometowns. Unfortunately due to educational factors, the majority of Indonesian workers who work abroad, work in the non-formal sector, mainly as domestic assistants. Because of this situation, migrant families in the homeland have the potential to face major problems, even family splits or divorces. In many cases, spouses of migrant workers, especially husbands in the homeland, abuse money earned by working wives. 'This case is not common, but there are cases where it is actually not just one family, but quite a lot. When the one who goes abroad, or the PMI is a woman, they send money home, the one who receives it is her husband, then there is a tendency for her husband to marry again,' said Prof. Dr. Sukamdi, senior researcher at the Center for Population and Policy Studies (PSKK), Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) Yogyakarta. Salinas, California, USA - September 17, 2015: Crop harvest by agricultural workers who spend hours bent over in the sun manually picking produce for grocers. Credit: ChuckSchugPhotography/Getty Images What Sukamdi reports is the result of research that has been carried out for many years in 4 countries. Indonesia is represented by four districts, two in West Java and two in East Java. The research project is titled CHAMPSEA, Children Health and Migrant Parents In South East Asia. In addition to Indonesia, the same research was conducted in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. The study began in 2008, resumed in 2016, and repeated again in 2023 to map the growing trend. Credit: dok UGM It was that phenomenon, Sukamdi said, that caused migration, originally thought of as one way out of poverty, to become ineffective. 'Because the utilization of reminders is not in the direction of productive activities,' he said buying reason. Another issue facing migrant workers is marital disruption or disruption in their marriages. Research conducted in four districts, namely Ponorogo and Tulungagung in East Java, and Sukabumi and Tasikmalaya in West Java gave consistent results. In Indonesia, more women are leaving. It's what we know with the feminization of migrants. Indonesian migration is because of the growing number of women and why women are one of them because of the job opportunities abroad that are in many domestic sectors, especially those in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan. Formally, there are differences in the issues found in this study, in different countries, although each country experiences the adverse effects of migraine for children and marital disruption. For example, in the first study in 2008, data were found that roughly 10 percent of children of migrant workers started smoking at a very early age, 6 to 12 years. But in Vietnam, the data found was not about cigarettes, but the consumption of liquor in children of migrant workers. Sukamdi stressed that PMIs know and are aware of the risks and there have been efforts to minimize that risk. However, the facts on the ground show that this issue is difficult to overcome. Even after the research team held various discussions with local governments of PMI sources such as Ponorogo and Tulungagung. With communication technologies already excellent as they are today, PMI tries to more often or intensify communication with families, including with bereaved spouses. Therefore, Sukamdi underlined that PMI's protection problem is not limited to protection against its migrants alone, but also protection of their families. He called for a government policy or program to help prevent migrant workers from facing such problems. Father with daughters looking through window at home waiting for the mother to come home Credit: Maskot/Getty Images/Maskot The study has delivered a summary of the policy to the government as a result. First, in the issue of childcare, as it is considered quite weighty, the researchers propose the need to develop a model of Early Childhood Education (PAUD) especially for migrant children. The second recommendation is related to remittance, the researchers propose the existence of microfinance management literacy. While marital disruption is recognized by Sukamdi as the most difficult issue to find a way out of. He said that several ways have been taken, such as the government of Ponorogo district, East Java, which gave conditions to its citizens who want to become PMI abroad, to commit to maintaining the integrity of the family. 'But I also do not know how effective the program is, because it is a bit difficult for us to find a suitable solution, which is then effective, it is rather difficult because the dimensions are very complex,' Sukamdi explained. ——————— Nurhadi Sucahyo reported for SBS Indonesian. Listen to SBS Indonesian every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 3pm. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram , and don't miss our podcasts .
Business Wire
24-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
NextGen Healthcare Hosts Healthcare Professionals from across U.S. at First AI Symposium
REMOTE-FIRST COMPANY/DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NextGen Healthcare, a leading provider of innovative, cloud-based healthcare technology solutions, hosted its first 'AI in Medicine Symposium' on June 4 in Dallas, Texas. Physicians and administrators from ambulatory healthcare organizations around the country attended the event, where attendees heard from leading voices in artificial intelligence and healthtech on topics such as: 'Our work is led by our belief in the value of thoughtful AI applications that cater to physicians' preferred workflows," said Dr. Sanjeev Kumar, Ph.D., chief data and analytics officer, NextGen Healthcare Share Historical parallels from the adoption of other transformative technologies in medicine and how they inform current AI integration. Current capabilities and limitations of AI in healthcare delivery for patients, providers, and practices. The appropriate role of AI in enhancing clinical decision-making, patient engagement, and operational efficiency. Potential risks, misconceptions, and ethical considerations surrounding AI use in healthcare settings. 'Since introducing the first fully EHR-integrated AI-driven ambient listening solution in 2023, NextGen Healthcare has continuously reaffirmed its commitment to making AI-enabled workflows accessible across specialties and practice sizes,' said Dr. Sanjeev Kumar, Ph.D., chief data and analytics officer at NextGen Healthcare and a speaker at the symposium. 'Our work is led by our belief in the value of thoughtful AI applications that cater to physicians' preferred workflows. The AI symposium provided a powerful opportunity to sit with our clients, hear their challenges, address their questions, and explore how AI can best support their long-term success.' AI will remain a focus later this year at NextGen Healthcare's highly anticipated annual user group meeting (UGM), which will be held November 2-5, 2025, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. With the theme of ' Where Innovation Meets Impact™,' UGM 25 will explore how AI-enhanced technology can meaningfully boost efficiency to improve the financial sustainability of practices, protect against provider and staff burnout, and support better patient outcomes. For additional details and the schedule at a glance, visit Register by August 31 to secure the best available pricing. For more information about NextGen Healthcare's AI-driven solutions, please visit About NextGen Healthcare, Inc. NextGen Healthcare, Inc. is a leading provider of innovative healthcare technology and data solutions. We are reimagining ambulatory healthcare with award-winning EHR, practice management and surround solutions that enable providers to deliver whole-person health and value-based care. Our highly integrated, intelligent, and interoperable solutions increase clinical quality and productivity, enrich the patient experience and drive superior financial performance. We are on a relentless quest to achieve better healthcare outcomes for all. Learn more at and follow us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.
