Donated pandemic visitation shelter will house Manitoba community's first food bank

Volunteers in Vita are using a pandemic cast-off to help fight hunger, as they work to transform one of the province's decommissioned visitation pods into the town's first food bank.

Repurposed shipping containers were used to visit loved ones during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but then stopped being used.

When Jane Roman heard the province was giving the pods away, she rushed to apply for the one set up outside the Vita and District Personal Care Home.

"To have it be available just when we needed it was kind of a miracle," she said. 

Roman and a group of volunteers had recently started meeting to make plans for a food bank in Vita, which is about 90 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg, and soon realized the small town is short on spare buildings to house it.

"It just seemed to be the right thing for us," she said.

Right now, people who need food hampers have to drive all the way to Grunthal, an hour-long round trip.

"You're not getting as much from that food donation as if it were right here in Vita," she said.

Roman said while a local church group has been helping drive some of those food baskets down to Vita, it's time the town — which has a population of just over 500, according to the latest census — had its own food bank. 

She said as word began to spread, the number of households picking up food at the church nearly doubled in just a few months.

The new reeve of the rural municipality of Stuartburn, Michelle Gawronsky, said she's grateful for the volunteers' budding initiative. While financial need has been growing in Vita, the economy has not.

"We are a very low-income area, so poverty is quite high," she said. "It's a definite boost to the community."

The RM has offered space behind the Vita fire hall to put the pod, which still has to be renovated and outfitted with refrigerators and other equipment.

Roman said her group is considering the RM's offer, and is welcoming donations to raise roughly $10,000 to get the food bank up and running.