LEWISTON, Maine — As part of our 2024 Feed Maine campaign, NEWS CENTER Maine is sharing stories of the people working behind the scenes to ensure Mainers in need don't go hungry.
Dozens of schools are partnering with Good Shepherd Food Bank, providing nutritious and culturally appropriate food for the growing number of new Mainers and their families.
Every other week, school staff distribute fresh produce, meat, and other food items delivered by Good Shepherd Food Bank to families of students who attend Montello Elementary School in Lewiston. Over the past three years, those families have grown from 30 to more than 100.
Parents and their young children recently lined up early in front of the school. Inside the school, students, volunteers, and staff loaded boxes of juice eggs, bananas, corn, and other staples into shopping carts.
Gunay Guliyeva and her family recently moved to Maine from Azerbaijan. Her two children attend school at Montello. She said the boxes of food from the pantry help her family survive while they settle into life in a new country.
"It helps, very helpful for us, because the first time we came here we didn't have a work permit, and we didn't work, so we needed food," Gunay explained.
Natasha Turcotte is Montello's attendance and parent engagement coordinator. She also oversees the pantry.
"We have a contract with Good Shepherd Food Bank. We get deliveries twice a month," she said. "I know we put out 78,000 pounds of food last year, and we are over that this year."
About 1,800 pounds of fresh produce is also delivered to the school every week.
Half of the students at the school's pre-K through sixth grade classes are multilingual, which is the largest population among Lewiston's five elementary schools. The school collaborates with the nonprofit to prioritize offering culturally appropriate food, including palm oil and staples like rice and diced tomatoes.
"Salted pollock fish. It's bone-in, and they love it. It's a delicacy family from Angola and Congo love. It's like us going and ordering filet," Turcotte explained.
Gunay is very grateful to get food items she is used to eating in her home country.
The pantry also distributes halal chicken and beef, which means they are processed in a way that is permissible to eat according to Islamic law. It's the only type of meat practicing Muslims are permitted to eat.
"We don't eat pork, you know, and they always ask about this," Gunay added.
The nonprofit's president, Heather Paquette, said Good Shepherd is on track to deliver 49 million pounds of food this year to Mainers experiencing food insecurity, including a growing number of new Mainers. Some are even trading their salaries to pay for housing and heating bills and going without when it comes to food.
"Those are experiences that our neighbors are experiencing, and we hear that daily," Paquette said.
That's why they're working to make sure kids and their families get nutritious meals, because there is so much at stake.
"If kids are hungry and they can't focus, they can come down and get a snack. That helps them reset and helps them get an education," Turcotte said.
A second-grade teacher at Montello also delivers 15 to 20 meals every other week to other families in need, including those experiencing homelessness.