If you care at all about the plight of hungry people in the Comox Valley, carefully examine the inserts in Wednesday's Comox Valley Record.Among them you will find a Quality Foods bag, into which both Comox Valley stores and the Comox Valley Record ask you to put non-perishable food for the local food bank.Once you do so, please take the food in your bag to either the Comox or Courtenay Quality Foods location or the Comox Valley Food Bank at 1755B 13th St. in Courtenay.“It’s welcome news because, with the price of food going up, it’s always nice to have more people contributing,” responded food bank president Jeff Hampton. “The ferry’s (fares) are going up, so the cost of food is going to go up on the Island.”The food bank can always use more for its supply, especially after March had five Thursdays, the day on which food is distributed to those who need it. There are normally four Thursdays in a month, Hampton noted.“To have the extra Thursday and to have all these people who hadn’t come yet tells me that a lot of people weren’t using it, but maybe with it being a long month they had to.”Hampton said he has noticed some new trends in the past year.“We’re getting more and more of the part-time employment and people with no income. We see a lot on social assistance, a lot on disability (pensions), a lot on part-time and a lot with no income.”In a sample month (October 2010), 208 people helped by the food bank were on social assistance. Others were categorized as provincial disability (153), part-time employment (88), no income (68), pension (39), employment insurance (32), other income (11), full-time employment (10), student resources (8), private disability (7) and self-employment (5).editor@comoxvalleyrecord.com