INUVIK - Upon giving a tour of the Inuvik Food Bank, Mandie Abrams opens a refrigerator to reveal about 20 bags of cereal.

"The fridge is broken, so that's all we can keep in here," she says. Without a cooling system, the fridge might as well be a bookshelf.

Mandie Abrams of the Inuvik Food Bank loads a grocery bag, which is the standard size of packages given to families. She said running the centre is extremely challenging, because volunteers need to stretch available donations. - Philippe Morin/NNSL photo

And while the centre still has a deep freezer - which on June 21, contained some donated muskox - Abrams said it doesn't have money for repairs.

So the ancient fridge will stay broken for now.

What's the use of a refrigerator with nothing to keep cool?

"Since January we've given out 918 bags of food," said Abrams.

"We've had very high usage this year. A normal night would be about 40 bags, but we were having 90-bag nights this winter."

From the centre's sparse shelves, it looks like they can barely keep up.

Since the Food Bank is a volunteer organization, Abrams said the centre's twelve volunteers must work to stretch every dollar, so the centre can stay open on Wednesdays.

"We need to sort and bag all the food and arrange to have volunteers here. It takes quite a bit," Abrams said, adding the centre must also be cleaned and records kept.

And of course, the biggest problem is finding donors, especially since people often complain about food prices in the north.

"We've been very fortunate to have the generosity of people making donations.

"But in times like these, the most difficult part is just keeping food on the shelves," she said on June 21.

"We're missing a lot of our staples. We need pasta and rice, we're out of fruit, we need soup."

Abrams added that volunteers have placed a limit on families, so there's enough food to go around.

Under the current rules, a typical client would receive one regular-sized grocery bag per two weeks.

These bags usually contain pasta and sauce, two fruit and two vegetables, a can of beans and two soups.

In Inuvik, such a bag costs about $22 to $25, but Abrams said the centre gets a deal from the local Northern store.

"We've been fortunate that grocery stores here give us a discount when we buy in bulk," she said.

While Inuvik's food bank might have its shortages, it is still the only one in the Beaufort Delta.

Abrams said this is probably a sign of success for Inuvik and its dedicated group of thrifty volunteers.

"It's hard to make a volunteer-run organization like this one run for years, and all by your own bootstraps," she said.