The St. Claude 4-H Home Ec Club holds a food drive every fall. For one whole evening, they gather in groups to collect food donations from every house in town. The food and monetary donations they receive go to the St. Claude Grocery Program.
“Food insecurities, inadequate income, and poor health are all social determinants of health,” said Ariane Comte of the grocery program. “Each of these impacts one and another. Providing a grocery program helps reduce that impact in our community.”
This year, they held the annual food drive on Oct. 10, going around town with sacs and wheelbarrows, ready to load a van full of non-perishable food donations.
The St. Claude Grocery Program has officially been running since 2018 but started much earlier out of a resident’s garage. The program serves about 25 people locally, supplying food to St. Claude and Haywood residents dealing with food insecurities.
St. Claude 4-H Home Ec Club president Rheanne Philippot has been with the club for four years now. The club meets from September to April annually and currently has 16 active members, each of whom gets to choose a skill to learn or build on each year. Throughout the season, the club has regular meetings and goes on little field trips—most recently to the Roland 4-H Museum.
Philippot said the club likes to help its community, and each member enjoys the annual food drive. She said they do it around the same time yearly, so all families have what they need for Thanksgiving.
On average, each house the club hits during the food drive donates about a box or bag full of food. Philippot said almost every house donates, and the ones who don’t usually just aren’t able to. The group lets the whole town know about the food drive before it happens to give everyone time to prepare. This year, the group collected another SUV’s worth of food donations.
During the food drive, people donate non-perishable food and cash. This year’s drive raised around $250 for the St. Claude Grocery Program.
As the grocery program runs largely on donations made by locals, Comte said the annual food drive is an important event.
“We are very fortunate to have a great group of students from 4-H willing to volunteer their time to raise awareness of food insecurity in the community,” she said. “We are honoured that people would spend time and money to help our clients.”
