North Helpline: We are serving more people now than at the height of the pandemic

Sorting food for the food banks

Photo courtesy North Helpline

North Helpline maintains food banks in Lake City and Bitter Lake. delivers food to shut-ins, and provides services to people in need. 

Their food resources are stressed right now, and they are in need of ongoing community assistance.

As they report:

During the COVID pandemic, federal assistance programs such as SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) were enhanced to help make food more accessible.

In March, those enhancements ended abruptly, leaving millions of families less food secure. We're now seeing what this means for us.

In simple terms, this has had a dramatic and direct impact on our community. Households saw, on average, a cut in food assistance by $105 per person.

From March 2022 to March 2023, after the cuts, unique households accessing our Lake City food bank increased by 43%, and by 51% at our Bitter Lake food bank.

We are serving more neighbors now than during the height of the pandemic. 

We need your support to keep food on the table and a roof overhead for all of us.

What We're Doing

• We are investing in our food purchasing budget to keep our shelves stocked with nutritious food for everyone that comes to our food banks.
• We're conducting a survey of those we serve, to better understand how we can be there for our community.
• Our new Food Access Director, Louren, is working to keep North Helpline on the path towards enhanced service models, such as adopting a grocery store layout.