'Building relationships with people' through community food pantries in Thunder Bay, Ont.

A volunteer group in Thunder Bay, Ont., that focuses onpicking up garbage and discarded needles around the city, says an initiative to help vulnerable people is also helping many in the community connect with one another.

Known as the Blessing Box program, residents might have already come across, what looks like a small doll-house on the side of the road, usually posted on the edge of someone's lawn.

"They are basically little food pantries and they are free for anyone who needs what's in them," Ashlee Burton, the organizer of the volunteer group, known as Giant Hearts Thunder Bay, told CBC News. "We also keep hygiene products, feminine products and baby necessities, so little packs of formula, soothers, that sort of stuff."

The group, formerly known as the Green Dream Team, has set up a total of four blessing boxes around the city since the initiative started in September 2018.

"You'd be surprised doing something as simple as clean ups ... you realize there's other needs that need to be met," Burton said, adding that she first got the idea for the boxes when she saw, what's known as a little free library, where residents can take and leave a book for others in the community.

Burton's goal is to install a total of eight to 10 blessing boxes in the city, and she said she's marked down some of the places that need it most.

"In two weeks, we're putting one on Brown Street," she said. "There's at least eight to 10 low income neighbourhoods that I thought that they would fit well into."

Burton added that she would like to also installone in County Park, somewhere on Cumberland Street as well as the Bay and Algoma area.

The blessing boxes themselves are all donated from a local decor store and the items inside, such as Kraft Dinner and cans of soup are also mostly donated as well.

Currently, Burton said she makes sure to go around the community and fill the boxes up herself, but she said homeowners who have volunteered to have a blessing box installed on their lawns have also started filling them up as well.

"They are well used and homeowners are building relationships with people they may have never met," she said. "It's having a pretty cool effect."

Burton said her next step is toinstallsome blessing boxes in Fort William First Nation.

Anyone interested in donating non-perishable foods, hygiene products and baby necessities is being asked to drop them off at a number of local businesses, such as Trixx on May Street or Eat Local Pizza on Red River Road.

The four blessing boxes in Thunder Bay are located inNorth Brodie Street,McLaughlin Street, Bethune Street and Empress Avenue.