What started as a way for the City of Lake Station to help families at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic became a community-wide effort. A previous partner with Beyond 4 Walls Christian Center, the City of Lake Station serves families in need weekly.
About five months ago, the city originally began sourcing their own food boxes, receiving at most 75 boxes every week that were then distributed to Lake Station residents. The COVID-19 pandemic had taken its toll on residents, and the city knew it had the opportunity to step in and help.
Enter Beyond 4 Walls Christian Center in Gary. Beyond 4 Walls shared its message of faith and compassion through community support and actions. When the center approached Lake Station about the food bank, proposing a partnership between the two entities to expand the food bank, the city saw it as an opportunity to make the program more permanent.
“Beyond 4 Walls told us that they could provide us with hundreds of boxes a week,” said Lake Station’s Jack Daniels. “They saw what we were doing and told us they wanted to be of service. After a few meetings with them, we realized that we should reach out to the schools in the area and ask them to inform their students that this program was available to them.”
Beyond 4 Walls was able to grow the number of food boxes to 400—even more some weeks. The center approached the city with a six-month deal, with the high probability of extending their contributions to a year and six months.
“It was a huge opportunity, multiplying the number of boxes we got by six times,” Daniels said. “We went from giving out anywhere from 50 to 75 boxes a week to passing out 400 in the span of an hour and a half.”
Each food box contains all the essentials a family will need for a balanced diet. The boxes include milk and another form of dairy, potatoes and other vegetables, fruits, and meat products like chicken, beef, hot dogs, or more.
“With all that, families will have a couple meals out of each box,” Daniels said.
The program has also shed light on the close-knit community Lake Station is.
“We have residents who come to pick up food boxes to deliver to other residents around the neighborhood who are unable to pick them up themselves,’ Daniels said.
Lake Station Senior Center receives food boxes, as well. Located at Columbus Park, it offers seniors a place to gather and socialize with others in the community and hosts weekly bingo games and free lunches on Fridays.
When COVID-19 was at its worst, the seniors and their needs were on Lake Station Mayor Bill Carroll’s mind. At the time, the senior center was new, but it had been embraced by the community quickly and had a positive impact on seniors.
“When they were told they couldn’t take part in that for a period of time was devastating for the seniors,” Daniels said. “Any opportunity Mayor Carroll and the city had to take those extra steps to make sure that our seniors still felt involved, safe, and cared for was huge.”
“For the past five weeks, we’ve had our fire chief, Chuck Fazekas, cook for the seniors, while Mayor Carroll has been providing meals to them every single week,” Daniels said.
“Every Friday, we were able to package and provide five meals to 60 seniors,” Carroll said. “A group of volunteers, myself, my chief of staff, Daniels, and our fire and police departments would hand deliver meals to seniors who couldn’t leave their homes or were at the most risk of catching COVID-19. That was a very coordinated effort by the community.”
After three weeks of partnering with Beyond 4 Walls, Lake Station was able to widen its impact by offering the service to other communities’ residents who needed it. Carroll made the decision to open up the food bank to anyone in the area, a decision that reflected his service mentality in and outside his community.
“I don’t care where you’re from, what your zip code is,” Carroll said. “If someone needs assistance and they are hungry, I’m not going to turn them away. The whole goal is to help people, not turn them away. We are one community."
A few months into the program, a couple of local businesses donated thousands of dollars to the city, giving it the opportunity to pass out milk, bread, and cereal to hundreds of people.
“We contacted other businesses we knew and told them it was something they wanted to do, and if they were interested, we could make this a massive event,” Daniels said. “And that’s what happened. We gave out 400 gallons of bilk, 400 loaves of bread, and upwards of a thousand boxes of cereal.”
“It was around the time that the show 'The Mandalorian' was on, so the cereal was Mandalorian themed, which the kids just loved,” Carroll said.
The program comes at a time when the Region, much like the rest of the country, is struggling to come back from the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the economy. Carroll remarked how the program was one way to help families get back on their feet.
“This is going to take a long time for us to recover from,” he said. “Just because there is a vaccine and just because places are starting to hire more people and open up doesn't mean people don't still need assistance. So, because of that, we are going to fight for our community, for what’s good and right.”
Those interested in receiving food boxes can pick up a box on Tuesdays at 9:45 a.m. at Riverview Park in Lake Station. For more information about the food Bank, visit the City of Lake Station’s website at https://www.lakestation-in.gov/
