While browsing Facebook a week or so ago, I came upon a group called Food Not Bombs.

It’s hard to argue with that sentiment.

This page, apparently, belongs to a local chapter of a much wider organization:

“Food Not Bombs shares free vegan and vegetarian meals with the hungry in over 1,000 cities around the world every week to protest war, poverty and the destruction of the environment.”

During the pandemic, the page notes, the group began to roll out a hamper program for people in need who have limited mobility or were self-isolating. Good on them.

One of its little postings on the page reads FREE SOUP: Saturday, October 8 (plus address and so on.) The simplicity and beauty and meaning of that rather wiggled into my heart.

So, as one does when on Facebook, I dove down the rabbit hole. How many other groups were doing such things? Where have I actually been?

I recently availed myself of the use of another, somewhat different page, where one can post cheap or free items such as furniture, appliances, clothing and so on. An oldish freezer belonging to a family member was gone for 50 bucks the next day.

Said family member also gave the lucky first-responding person a quilt and a couple of other items. The recipient needed them. She had only been in Canada for three months, and could probably only imagine what winter might bring.

Which led me to the other pages helping Saskatonians in need.

It turns out that there are at least seven groups on Facebook helping on the food side. Along with Food Not Bombs, we have Over the Rainbow, Never Hungry, People Helping People, Caremongering, Helping Hands (all with “Saskatoon”) and Saskatoon Meal Sharing Group.

I also learned from a very helpful food access listing that there are at least four community cupboards in Saskatoon: Riversdale Community Fridge at 424 20th St. West, The Blue Bite Bin at Latrace and Murray Place, Free Food Forest Grove at the corner of 115th Street and Forest Drive, and Holliston Free Pantry, corner of Louise Avenue and Fifth Street.

These have all appeared in addition to the better-known charitable groups providing food: The Salvation Army, Saskatoon Food Bank & Learning Centre, Saskatoon Friendship Inn, The Bridge on 20th, Saskatoon Indian & Metis Friendship Centre, Prairie Harm Reduction and EGADZ. I’m sure I’ve missed some; apologies.

These last groups have been around for, in many cases, decades. But the community cupboards and groups like Food Not Bombs are more recent additions to the food assistance list.

There are likely several reasons for this — among them the simple technicality that people can start such things and easily reach out and be found via social media, which wasn’t around when the Sally Ann got going.

But they would not have been founded in the first place if there were not rising need.

I’m sure you’ve heard or read news reports about Food Banks needing help more than ever.

“More people than ever before in the history of food banks in this country are relying on our support to put food on the table,” said Kristin Beardsley, CEO of Food Banks Canada, in early October.

Visits in March, according to the organization’s Hunger Counts survey, were almost 1.5 million, up 35 percent from pre-COVID-19.

That was before inflation really started to soar.

And here we go into the teeth of winter, when shelter — also becoming more expensive, although less in Saskatoon than elsewhere in Canada — is not an option. Therefore, people tend to reduce calories, giving up sufficient food for roofs over their heads.

It alarms me that so many assistance organizations have popped up over the years, a reflection of economic changes (such as inflation, more recently) and so many other societal problems (too many to list). Yet here we are.

Now, the holidays are on the horizon. Many of us, even those with middle-class lives, are going to feel the pinch as we try to keep up with the regular (and rising) bills as well as gift, special food, and other seasonal demands.

Not all of us can share. But for those of us who can, there are myriad ways, large and small, to do so. More than ever.

• Joanne Paulson