Dozens of free food efforts and little pantries are pushing Calgary's charity sector to change

The little free food pantry in Dover was hand-painted and built of reclaimed metal cabinets. But someone smashed it, maybe with a truck.

At another pantry, the team struggled to keep anything on the shelves. One particular resident would watch for the drop-off truck, then scurry out with garbage bags to empty it.

The group of volunteers in Greater Forest Lawn can tell other stories, too: food has been trashed, and a different angry neighbour forced one pantry to move. But none of that has stopped them.

These women have been picking up donated food and filling pantries weekly for three years. 

Why?

"When we go and drop stuff off at the pantries, if there's people there, they're just so grateful. They thank us and tell us we're angels," said volunteer Grace Tessman. "I get pretty choked up over those kinds of things because I don't feel like an angel. I just try to do my part."

This project in east Calgary is an example of the kind of informal help — pantries, community fridges, Facebook groups, drop-ins at a church or gurdwara, pay-what-you-can stores and mutual aid societies — that surged in popularity during the pandemic.

It's based on volunteers, can seem haphazard and lacks some of the food custody system developed in the formal food bank charity sector.

But insiders say these efforts aren't slowing and that's challenging the formal charity sector to be different, too.

"I have not seen a drop off at all," says Meaghon Reid, head of Vibrant Communities Calgary, which has been studying and now measuring the size of this informal response.

"(Instead), we've heard of more initiatives fostering that informal system. More pantries, more community fridges that are anonymous, that people can just go to. And traffic on those groups like YYC Volunteers and the community groups, they have as much traffic … as they did near the beginning of COVID.

"We've now entrenched this as part of our system."

Reid says the benefit of the formal food bank system is its size and longevity — it can raise and distribute massive amounts of food, has been doing so for decades. Plus, it has protocols in place to ensure the food doesn't go bad.

But many people are turning to the informal system in addition or instead of the formal food bank system.