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This article is based on a socio-ethnographic observation of food distribution by a Catholic association in a small town in the north of France with weak socio-economic indicators. After having described how a dozen elderly volunteers continue to take charge of about a hundred packages monthly, the article shows how maintaining this type of assistance can be explained by a local context in which the social control of the poor goes hand in hand with the multi-positioning of local leaders in the various structures of assistance. In the end, the confluence of a conception of aid founded on charity and a contemporary discourse of mistrust of dependency produces forms of assistance that are particularly stigmatizing and limiting for the beneficiaries.