Kingsway Mall rooftop garden looking to help Edmonton Food Bank

Edmonton’s food bank is getting some help from their neighbours up the road. Kingsway Mall has brought back their rooftop garden for the second year in a row and it has grown in size from last year.

“This year we’ve actually grown the garden and it’s almost twice the size. We’ve repositioned it and changed the kind of produce we’ve gotten here,” said Bo Tarasenko, the marketing manager of Kingsway Mall.

The rooftop will also see some new residents this summer. The mall says that bees will be added to the rooftop to help pollination.

When asked why this initiative is important, Tarasenko says it’s just the community coming together to help each other.

“We’ve wanted to do this for so many years and it didn’t really make sense until we realized that we could do some good with it and help them out,” said Tarasenko.

In April, the food bank says they served around 40,000 Edmontonians, and with the CFL’s annual Purolator Tackle Hunger initiative returning to Edmonton for the Elks home opener against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, they say it doesn’t matter where the food comes from because the numbers keep going up for those in need.

“It doesn’t matter if it comes from the store or the garden. What matters is that it comes to us. Because we have so many people were trying to help,” said Doug Thomson, the media & communications coordinator for the Edmonton Food Bank.

Purolator Tackle Hunger

The push to tackle hunger has been a league-wide initiative since 2003, and has helped raise over 16 million pounds of food for food banks in each city that has a team.

The Elks will be partnering with the Edmonton Food Bank during and after the game as fans look to last year’s donations of 50,000 pounds of food.

Elks and Riders kick off at 5 p.m. on June 8.