Cambridge Bay’s wellness centre fights hunger

Tiffany Otokiak puts away food at Cambridge Bay’s youth centre which kids will help cook and later eat, as part of a daily cooking class and supper program. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

The food bank at Cambridge Bay’s well centre helps many households in the community eat a little better. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — Monday afternoons, those are the extra-busy times at the Cambridge Bay Wellness Centre because that’s when the centre’s food bank is open for business.

The food bank’s shelves are stocked with food, mainly staples, such as flour, rice, canned foods and cereals.

And the wellness centre also keeps a freezer full of country foods, such as caribou, muskox and Arctic char.

But it’s not always enough.

“What we give out is what we have. Some people just want country food. Others need ingredients for bannock,” said centre director Marie Ingram.

Last December, food from the Wellness Centre’s food bank helped 46 adults and 96 children. Counselors first screened the requests for food, because “we don’t just hand out the food,” Ingram said.

So, before people can receive food from the centre, they’re asked why they need the food, which is supposed to be used as an emergency supplement.

Although the centre spends about $2,000 a month to buy food for the food bank, it’s largely dependent on donations, from individuals and businesses like the local fish and meat processor, Kitikmeot Foods.

But despite the food bank, food insecurity remains huge in Cambridge Bay, Ingram says.

Store-bought food prices are high. Not everyone has the means to order food via sealift or possess the skills and equipment to go out on the land to hunt and fish.

To help stave off hunger in this community of 1,500, the Wellness Centre now incorporates food into all its programs.

Many of its programs are all about food.

There’s a daily breakfast program for children and a weekly, healthy-foods hot breakfast for adults. Once a week elders and youth get together — with snacks; pregnant woman and young mothers take cooking classes and then eat what they prepare; and now, thanks to Wellness Centre support, the youth centre offers a cooking lesson every afternoon followed by supper.

This program costs $1,000 week, with up to 30 kids eating there every night.

Kids who come to the Wellness Centre’s breakfast program and then go to the youth centre after school get at least two meals a day.

“But we can’t feed everyone all the time,” Ingram said, and some stay hungry.

You don’t have to look hard to find people in Cambridge Bay who say it’s find it hard to eat well — or even at all.

One woman told Nunatsiaq News how she used to let her children eat first when her household lacked food. Sometimes she would go two days without eating.

A research study from McGill University, which looked at women in another Nunavut community, found that four in 10 women sometimes lacked food, and nearly eight in 10 skipped meals or cut back on what they ate to make sure their children ate enough.

Even so, about half of Nunavut’s children aged three to five don’t get enough food to eat, says information on children gathered during the 2007-08 Qanuippitali Inuit health survey.

Food insecurity, defined by the World Health Organization, as when people don’t “have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life,” affects even those with jobs and a good income.

A Cambridge Bay woman with a government job said she finds it hard to cover food costs for her household of 10, spending $1,200 on rent and $2,400 a month on food. Without the hunting skill of her husband, they wouldn’t manage, she said.