City schools team up to help Drive Away Hunger
Nine city schools had been collecting food items for the past several weeks.
Thursday, they were able to see the fruits of their labours.
Volunteers from Farm Credit Canada were busy Thursday afternoon unloading trailers at the Interfaith Food Bank following a barbecue event and the culmination of this year’s Drive Away Hunger event.
“We had three tractors travelling to all parts of the city today,” Steven Harris, district director for Farm Credit Canada, said Thursday after volunteers unloaded the final bags.
“We haven’t weighed all the food yet, so we’ll be tallying that up later in the week. But it’s an absolute success. FCC is working to connect our customers, who are involved in producing food, with the neighbourhoods and communities that need food through food banks.”
Drive Away Hunger began in 2004 as a follow up to one Ontario man’s idea. It has since evolved around the country.
“We adopted it as our main fundraising activity to support the communities we live in across Canada,” Harris said,
“We had a record year last year and we are trying to do that again. There’s 860,000 people in Canada that rely on the food banks every year, about a third of those are children. So the importance is we’re seeing the need for the food.”
“This is really exciting,” said Danielle McIntyre, executive director for the Interfaith Food Bank.
“Farm Credit Canada Drive Away Hunger is not only a food drive, it’s a food drive that inspires people to get involved in what we’re doing. It’s engaging a lot of our youth and inspiring them that there is something they can do to help address hunger in their community.”
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