Marillac Place is a transitional shelter for women ages sixteen and up who are pregnant, who have a child up to two years old in their care, or who are attempting to regain care of their child. Women who come to Marillac Place can stay in residence for up to one year. While in residence, they receive 24-hour guidance and support, onsite counselling, educational opportunities, and parenting and life skills training. At any given time, 10 women and 10 children can stay at the shelter. When women transition out of residence, they can still access support, resources, and services through Marillac Place’s after-care program.

“Often the women that come to Marillac Place have very limited or no healthy support networks in their lives and so it’s really hard to have a baby and not have that, so we aim to provide those healthy supports while they’re in residence as well as when they transition back into the community,” says Julie Walder, the executive director at Marillac Place.

Marillac Place is one of 120 agencies and community programs with the Community Food Assistance Network that receives food support from The Food Bank of Waterloo Region. The Food Bank provides grocery gift cards to Marillac Place that they then use towards buying the food items they need.

“Fresh milk, fresh eggs, fresh produce… those are the big things that we’re able to buy because of the support from The Food Bank,” Julie notes.

At Marillac Place, there is a communal kitchen stocked with fresh, frozen, and non-perishable food that residents can use for their meals and snacks. A few nights a week, a staff member will cook dinner and invite residents to help, giving them a chance to learn new recipes and meal preparation skills.

“Meal planning happens in partnership with the residents,” Julie explains. “They set the schedule for meals the week before and then we shop for the ingredients to provide those meals.”

Julie notes that the residents don’t know each other when they arrive at Marillac Place but that the kitchen often becomes the place where they bond with one another and form friendships.

“So many wonderful things happen around food,” she says. “The shared mealtimes create opportunities for connection and peer support. And learning skills and new things together create opportunities for growth. There’s just a sense of community and hope that happens around food.”

Unfortunately, like many of our Network partners, Marillac Place is not immune to the effects of inflation. Right now, the shelter’s biggest challenge with running the food support program is increasing food prices.

“With the rising cost of food, it’s getting very difficult for us to operate,” Julie says. “The cost of infant formula has increased by 20 per cent over 2023.”

As food and formula prices continue to rise, Julie is grateful to The Food Bank for providing grocery gift cards and to the community for their donations to support residents. But food support programs alone are not the solution. To address the root of food insecurity, strong public policies on social assistance, living wages, and affordable housing are needed.

“The most requested support from our after-care program is for food,” Julie says. “This is women that have transitioned from shelter to independent living. That’s with accessing food banks, with accessing community pantries, with accessing every single resource that they can in the community. With the housing crisis and the increase in food costs, it’s just not enough. It’s very painful to see when people move out of shelter and they’ve gotten that far, and now they’re hungry and their children are hungry because there’s not enough. We all know where a minimum wage job will lead you and it’s not into independent living in an apartment.”

If you’d like to help The Food Bank support Network partners like Marillac Place, visit our Get Involved section on our website to learn more about donating food, funds, or time. To learn more about Marillac Place, visit marillacplace.ca.