Grizzly Cache offers food to Big Lake students

BIG LAKE — At Big Lake Elementary, hunger is not allowed.

The Grizzly Cache, a program where kids in the community can get food, sends home packages so kids and their families can eat, even when school isn’t in session.

“We thought we could send them home with a weekend package so they could have some food on the weekends,” said Rene Ritter, a preschool aide at the school who volunteered to run the Grizzly Cache when it started early in the school year. “If you’re hungry, you’re thinking about being hungry, you’re not thinking about math.”

Food pantries at schools are not unheard of in the Valley. Susitna Valley Jr./Sr. High School, for example, has one, as well as a “snack station” they keep stocked for any student to eat at school.

The Grizzly Cache, though, is new to Big Lake. Ritter said that the initial plan had been to send a package home each weekend but the district’s Nutrition Services department — the people that serve daily school lunches — has also stepped up during the COVID pandemic, sending dinners home each night. Nutrition Services’ funding was enough to send home weekend food as well.

“Our packages used to be twice as big, then Nutrition Services was sending home weekend packages and kids weren’t able to carry it,” Ritter said. “We decided to scale ours back and we would send out a supplement so that when that money runs out, when the school doesn’t have meals to send home anymore for the evenings and weekends, we can make them big again.”

Ritter runs a team of about eight volunteers that includes most of the kindergarten wing of the building and others throughout the building. She’s had students in to help as well.

Big Lake Elementary School principal Leigh Magnan and others have attended community council meetings seeking grants for the program.

“When I volunteered to do it I thought that food would be delivered here and I would just have to pass it out. It was not that,” Ritter said. “We had to get the food. So we had to fundraise and we had to organize.”

Ritter said the effort came about as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has increased food insecurity nationwide but also in Big Lake. In addition to the community council grant, money and other donations have come in from across the community.

“There is a Big Lake Facebook page for our community and people have put it on there. And we literally have stuff just dropped off at our door, people calling saying ‘I’ve got bags of groceries here for the Grizzly Cache,’ or ‘how about some cold hard cash?’” Ritter said. “It’s overwhelming and it’s awesome.”

She said the school also coordinates with local food pantries. Things that wouldn’t make sense to send home with a child to cook go there. And the pantries have offered lots of logistical advice as well.

Ritter said that generally, the Grizzly Cache tries to keep food moving through the system rather than stockpiling it so, space-wise, one small room has been enough. Students are able to get a package anonymously if they want and the program is open to anyone who asks.

She said the pantry, aside from providing food, imparts lessons to students.

“Kids are learning to give to others. And you’d be surprised about how little time it takes to do this. The shopping trips, they take very little time. When you’re focused on the positive and something good, it’s amazing how everything comes together and surrounds it. So put your energy into good things,” Ritter said.

Harlinn French and Serenity Johnson are in the fifth grade at Big Lake Elementary. Andrew Wellner is a teacher there.