The Helping Hands food pantry is adopting a unique approach to addressing food security in the city. 

Since May, the food pantry has been offering a choice model, where people can enter the grocery store-style pantry and select what they need for their family, rather than receiving a hamper. 

“We've had folks standing in here crying because they've never had access to milk before or cheese, or that they can make Kraft Dinner for their kids,” said Erika Gilroy, Helping Hands development co-ordinator. 

The pantry features a fridge stocked with essentials like milk and butter, a freezer filled with frozen items such as fries, bread and meats, and shelves filled with a variety of dry and canned goods. 

Allowing people to choose gives them more dignity and has also reduced the amount of food distributed to clients.

“Less food is actually being taken than when it was in hampers,” said Dalyce Sather-McNabb, Northreach Society executive director. Northreach Society amalgamated with Helping Hands over the past year.  

“There's actually more food to go around when people are given the opportunity to choose.”

Gilroy said that many people accessing the food bank and their pantry have never needed to before. 

“Grande Prairie is full of a lot of financial gain, but there's also a lot of struggle, unfortunately,” she said, “we're seeing a lot of seniors, a lot of people with disabilities, and a lot of families, mostly single parents, coming into access services here.”

She said that some families are making choices between rent or mortgage and groceries.

“It could happen to anybody; anybody can be in a situation where they might need help from Helping Hands or other food security places in Grande Prairie.”

Still, Helping Hands wants to ensure a low barrier of access for those in the community, so it does not have an onerous application process or require financial information. 

“Very few people actually abuse the system; they're hungry, they need food, their children are hungry and they need food, so keeping access as low a barrier as possible is part of the goal,” said Sather-McNabb.

Backbone organization

City council approved $160,000 last year to Helping Hands to fund a pilot project to create a backbone organization that would make a co-ordinated approach to addressing food insecurity in Grande Prairie and focus on long-term solutions.

The city said the goal was not to remove any organizations in the city that provide food.

“With Helping Hands being the backbone organization, it would never be about eliminating any of the other organizations or what they do in the community; it's really about breaking down the silos and working more directly together,” said Tammy Wentzell, city director of Housing and Community Development, last year.

“A really big goal is to get to the point where we're decreasing duplication of services, that we're all supporting each other, that we're directing folks where they need to go to get the help they need,” said Sather-McNabb.  

Gilroy is meeting with other local food security agencies in Grande Prairie to gain a better understanding of what is being offered and streamline ways to collaborate. 

“Collaboration takes time, building relationships takes time, and this is in no way should be considered a competition, or that we're a direct competitor of any other agency within the city, we're just here as an adjunct,” said Sather-McNabb.

Recently, Helping Hands was able to donate extra produce it received to other food security organizations, as well as soup and frozen meals to Wapiti House and the Saint Lawrence Centre.

Last year city council received multiple funding requests from different organizations for their food security programs, and found that collaboration between those organizations was lacking. 

The approach to food security in Grande Prairie was seen as reactive, relying on short-term relief and fragmented services.

Last September, a meeting was held with local organizations which provide food to the public.

The city recognized an urgent need for a dedicated and focused approach to addressing food security within the city. Helping Hands took on the challenge. 

Food Banks Alberta 

Since then, Helping Hands has partnered with Food Banks Alberta, serving as a hub for Northwestern Alberta. The partnership has enabled the organization to distribute food to communities in the surrounding area on behalf of Food Banks Alberta. 

“We get a lot of our dry goods and frozen goods from Food Banks Alberta, so that's been really great,” said Gilroy, noting it has also provided items in high demand such as baby formula, and has also provided a 45-foot freezer sea-can as well as a forklift and training. 

The partnership has also included information on how to scale the operation of the pantry so that it can help more people. 

Since May, nearly 16,000 kilograms of food have been delivered to Helping Hands. 

Food Banks Alberta also helps provide emergency relief to communities in the area. Helping Hands stores emergency items ready to be deployed, such as drinking water and care packages for evacuees. 

This is the first partnership by a city organization with Food Banks Alberta; the partnership may come with additional funding in the future. 

The partnership between Food Banks Alberta and Helping Hands will mean the organization will need to achieve the standards of excellence set by Food Banks Canada.

“Being a member of Food Banks Alberta automatically makes you a member of Food Banks Canada, so with that comes extra kinds of support,” said Sather-McNabb.

The support from Food Banks Canada includes grants, which Helping Hands has already applied for and will continue to work on other applications as well.

Need funds and volunteers

Helping Hands still needs food donations, monetary donations and volunteers. 

“We really need volunteers; we need a robust, diverse group of folks, people with muscle that can help move things, people with trucks that can potentially deliver allotments to some of our other communities.

“A lot of the volunteers in the other communities don't have, maybe, the capacity to be picking up pallets of food, and we need volunteers for cleaning schedules, we need volunteers as we grow and as we potentially have more shopping days, we're just going to need more people,” said Sather-McNabb.

She said that in the future, there will also be some fundraising endeavours.

If interested in donating or volunteering, you can contact Helping Hands through their Facebook page at facebook.com/HelpingHandsGP/.

“The need is so great, and we can't, unfortunately, help everybody, but we try to help, or at least try to get people connected to somewhere else in the community, if we're not able to help them directly,” said Gilroy.

Food insecurity affects about 19 per cent of Grande Prairie residents, according to the 2023 Food Access & Affordability Survey report, which was partially sponsored by the city.