The AMS’s 2023/24 Services Report showed a continued upward trend in service usage, including at the AMS Food Bank.
This year’s report documented 36,546 user interactions in total across 6 services — down from 8 last year with the AMS’s discontinuation of eHub and Housing Services. This marks a 64 per cent increase in total interactions from the 23,417 interactions reported in 2022/23.
The food bank remains the AMS’s most used service, representing around 69 per cent of all service interactions. The AMS made several changes in 2023/24 to accommodate its close to 64.4 per cent increase in usage for 2023/24, notably adding a walk-in fridge to help with cold-storage space, according to AMS Senior Manager of Student Services Kathleen Simpson.
Simpson also said the AMS held recipe card competitions to bolster creative use of the ingredients offered by the food bank, conducted intake surveys to better understand client needs and gained a new sponsor, Acuitas Therapeutics, which covered some of the food bank’s costs. According to Simpson, Acuitas Therapeutics will continue to support the AMS Food Bank into 2024/25.
Simpson also said one of the AMS’s biggest goals for the food bank is increasing how many people it can serve in a day.
“Finer adjustments [will continue to be made] throughout the year to make sure … we’re not having to turn folks away at the end of the day just because we can’t serve them in that seven hour period [the food bank is open],” Simpson said.
During the 2023/24 year, AMS Safewalk showed the most dramatic change with the report noting a 440 per cent increase in completed trips.
Additionally, while all AMS services are broadcast through Jumpstart, Simpson said that in both 2022/23 and 2023/24 the AMS chose to target Safewalk and Tutoring since those are the services most applicable to incoming new students.
AMS Tutoring’s usage increased 56 per cent in user interactions from the 2022/23 year.
AMS Peer Support noted record high rates of students reporting suicidality in 2022/23 — which have since plummeted. Disclosures of thoughts of suicide in Peer Support interactions dropped from 42 per cent in 2022/23 to just 9 per cent.
Simpson said this decrease could be due to the national crisis hotline, 988, which launched last year.
Whatever the cause, Simpson said the service was happy to have been able to support the students that came to them.
“We’re super grateful for students putting their trust in us … and we’re really excited for … September in particular, because that’s … really our chance to connect not just with all students, but also students who are coming to campus for the first time and maybe trying to figure out what their network of support is going to look like for their whole time at UBC.”
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