LA RONGE — The Lac La Ronge food bank was busy over December — but quiet. A few years ago, this big basement room would have been jam-packed with people lining up for food hampers on pick-up day.
But since the start of COVID-19, the food bank has asked people not to come to its downtown location anymore.
Instead, the only people here are hard-working volunteers, getting ready to load the hampers into cars and drive them to homes all across the tri-community of La Ronge, Air Ronge, and the Lac La Ronge Indian Band.
In some ways, the deliveries have been a boon — people who couldn’t make it to the food bank can now get the food right at their door.
But it has come at a cost.
“We now have a limit of 40 hampers that we can handle in a week,” said food bank chair Cheryl Norgaard. “To get it delivered, we max out at 40.
“In the past, we had times when 60 or 70 people would come through the food bank. Now, when we get to 40, we stop. Otherwise, we aren’t able to manage it.”
Norgaard, who has worked with the food bank for 15 years, says people in the community have always been generous, filling up donation boxes at the local churches and schools with shelf-stable food the food bank can send out. But these days, almost everyone is feeling the pinch, and there is less to go around.
'This isn't working'
Rising food prices are also taking a big bite out of the food bank’s budget.
In 2019, Norgaard says the food bank would spend around $5,000 per month on groceries.
Three years later, they are serving just over half as many people as they used to — but the grocery bill has stayed stubbornly identical and is even threatening to climb higher. If they were to return to their pre-COVID number of hampers, Norgaard estimates they would need to spend $10,000 per month to keep sending out the same food. And now a handful of COVID-19 grants, which helped the food bank keep buying produce over the last few years, have ended or are close to running out.
“Everything is increasing — gas, rent, food, heat,” said Norgaard. “Everything is on the increase. I just don’t know how people are supposed to manage. This isn’t working.”
Each food hamper contains a couple of days’ worth of emergency food; a tin of beans and a bag of rice or pasta, canned soup, meat, powdered milk, and some produce.
It's not much food — you could fit it all in a regular grocery basket and still have room left over — but when that’s all that stands between having nothing in the cupboard and having something to eat, it can make all the difference.
Norgaard says they have had to make hard choices as more people look to the food bank for help, and volunteers are stretched to capacity.
“People used to get a hamper once every four weeks if they needed it,” she said. “Now we’ve had to extend it to one every six weeks, (which) some people are finding really hard.
“But when we’re only doing 40 hampers a week, we wanted to give everyone the chance to get in.”
Every Monday, volunteers answer calls and check Facebook Messenger to get people registered for a hamper. But spots fill up fast.
Tina Johnson is the extended hours program manager at the Scattered Site Outreach Program, which shares a building with the food bank. She often helps clients who are trying to get food for themselves and their families and struggling to get on the list.
“Some of our folks will try to access the food bank, and when they call to order a box, they’re already gone,” Johnson said. “Usually, within the first hour that they’re taking calls, there’s nothing left. It’s all gone.”
With so many people calling every week, Norgaard says the food bank has to adhere to a strict policy — it’s the only way they won’t buckle under the demand.
“Once we hit our max, we quit taking calls,” she said. “We turn the phone off. It just has to be done.
“It’s very hard for the volunteers because having to say ‘no’ to somebody who is in need of food is incredibly difficult. And people tell us, ‘it’s an emergency.’ And I get that. I do.
“But everybody who’s coming here needs food. It’s all an emergency.”
Still, people keep trying everything they can to get help. Most days, on delivery day, one or two people will show up at the food bank to see if there are any hampers to spare. They are turned away and told to call again next week.
“If we bend the rules, we’d have to bend them all the time,” Norgaard said. “There would be so many reasons to bend it. It’s hard because we know that people really need us.”
She estimates if the food bank could deliver food to all the people in the La Ronge area who are going hungry, they’d be sending out around 250 or 300 hampers every week — seven times what they can manage.
“People are going without enough food, or any food, or nutritious food.”
Other organizations in the La Ronge area are also trying to keep people fed — but they face the same challenges.
Ron Woytowich, executive director of the Kikinahk Friendship Centre, said staff have started taking extra food hampers to some seniors’ residences when they can.
“There has been more than one occasion this year when our staff went to a senior’s residence and walked in, and said ‘here’s your food,’ and the senior just started crying,” he said. “One of them just showed us that they had nothing in their kitchen — nothing at all. They had used all the food in the house.
“You start to realize, these very people who have lived here all their lives are suddenly so short of food.”
In the days ahead, the Friendship Centre will send out its yearly Christmas hampers to 300 families in the area to help put a holiday dinner on the table.
Woytowich has been organizing Christmas hampers for a long time — and has seen both the need for extra food in the community and the cost for every hamper, skyrocket in the last few years.
A decade ago, he says it cost the centre $3,500 to put together 130 hampers. In 2021, it cost $12,000 for 250 hampers. In the last twelve months, the cost has doubled to more than $20,000.
“It’s not cheap anymore,” Woytowich said. “Food prices have gone up, and people really do need food, quite frankly.”
