VICTORIA -- Save-On-Foods grocery stores are helping a Victoria children's home save on their food bills this Christmas by donating $1,000 in food and another $600 in grocery gift cards.

Jeneece Place is a home where children and their families can stay while receiving medical care in Victoria. The facility opened in 2012 and is located on the grounds of Victoria General Hospital. The 10-bedroom home has a dining room, living room, play areas and a large kitchen where parents can make meals for their families. canadian press

The managers of eight local Save-On-Foods stores delivered all the bags of groceries themselves.

“It feels really good, you actually feel like you are making a difference," said Roger Junker, manager of the Pandora Avenue Save-On-Foods.

It's the fifth year in a row the grocery chain has donated to Jeneece Place. 

Junker says all the managers get together and look around the community to see where the food and funds are needed. 

“This is a place where people are in crisis, families are in need and sick," he said. The amount of stress that’s already being put on the families is high; their goal is to try and ease that burden.

“It means everything,” said Veronica Carroll, CEO of the Children’s Health Foundation, which owns and operates Jeneece Place. 

“I know that for families staying here, the last thing they want to think about is going shopping,” she said.

The food donations will pack the pantry and are expected to feed families for several weeks. The gift card donations will help supplement anything else families may need that was not delivered Wednesday.

Each year about 400 families call Jeneece Place “home” when traveling to Victoria for their child’s medical care. Over 2,000 families have stayed at the facility since it opened.

Jeneece Place was the dream of Jeneece Edroff, who was diagnosed at age three with neurofibromitosis, a disease that caused tumors to grow off every nerve ending in her spine. 

She had undergone over a dozen surgeries and numerous sessions of chemotherapy in Vancouver. This experience gave her firsthand knowledge of how important it is for families to have a supportive, home-like place to stay close to hospitals where their children are being cared for.