Rogers Centre to be used as temporary facility to help Food Banks Canada

TORONTO – Rogers Centre, the home of the Toronto Blue Jays, is going to be temporarily converted into a giant food bank facility.

Rogers Communications and the Jays Care Foundation have announced a new initiative, called Step Up to the Plate, to support Food Banks Canada.

They say the stadium, currently in disuse because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the suspension of the Major League Baseball season, will house more than 4.5 million kilograms of food.

The program will see hundreds of Rogers employees and their families volunteer go on the field to sort 6,000 pallets of food into food hampers, which will then be delivered across Canada to families in need.

The organizations say each hamper will contain a variety of non-perishable food items and provide one person with a week’s worth of food.

Rogers says its goal is to fill 390,000 hampers, for a total of eight million meals.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2020.