Food program expands, Scouts lend a hand

WASILLA — When the Pontiac stuffed with food pulled up to the Mat-Su Food Bank Saturday, local Boy Scouts quickly formed a line to pass food into the building.

“Boy, you have a deep trunk!” assistant scoutmaster Kirk Brown joked with the woman delivering the food, which had been donated to a local Girl Scout troop.

Lynette Ortolano, program director of the food bank’s Food 4 Kids program, said the Boy Scouts’ effort is the biggest food donation the pantry gets most years.

The food bank itself is going through a period of growth. For one thing, it’s transitioning from its former identity as the Wasilla Food Pantry into more of a regional food bank role — hence the name change.

“Moving to more of a food bank just allows us more reach in the Valley,” she said.

The bank also supplies food to the other 22 food pantries in the Valley.

“We’re seeing more and more families who really just a couple short months ago were middle class,” Ortolano said.

Another area of expansion is her program. Ortolano was once in charge of the Valley’s Children’s Lunchbox operation. That group provided hot meals to children at various locations like the Boys and Girls Club of Mat-Su and the Sutton Library.

Now she’s doing the same kind of work, but under the umbrella of the Mat-Su Food Bank, including taking over the Children’s Lunchbox meal sites. She said the program feeds 100 children each day.

As for the food the Scouts were dropping off, Brown said it comes from a variety of places. Some gather it at grocery stores, others canvass their neighborhoods to pick up from people’s homes.

A single Boy Scout troop serves both Shaw and Larson elementary schools, so that troop organizes a competition between the schools and gathers food that way.

Speaking of competition — Ray Lawrence, who works for the food bank, emerged from the building to say he wanted to incite some competition.

“I’d like to challenge all the churches in the area to come up with this same concept and see if they can beat the Boy Scouts,” he said. “I’ve challenged my own church.”

He said his work at the food bank is a privilege, one he’d encourage anyone else to take on. People are too quick to look at their finances and think they can’t do anything to help an organization like the food bank, but they’re wrong, he said. Even if they don’t have money, everyone’s got some spare time.

“Come and wash a table, come and empty a refrigerator and defrost it, come and paint a wall,” he said.

Brown and his troop sorted food for most of the afternoon as it came in, packing it into crates arranging it by what types — pasta, oatmeal, beans, canned tomatoes, stuffing mix, cereal, etc.

Ortolano said the Scouts brought in 5,200 pounds of food last year, and by 3 p.m. Saturday they had already counted 4,500 pounds and were poised to top last year’s haul.

For the Scouts, though, what they get is a sense of volunteerism. They have to volunteer so many hours to be Scouts.

“That’s what Scouting is — volunteering and helping the community,” Brown said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.