Canstructure Contest collects hundreds of canned items for food bank
The team from Penn-Bernville Elementary School was named the contest’s winner
A re-creation of the Hundred Acre Wood — complete with Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore and Piglet — made with canned food items earned the team from Penn-Bernville Elementary School the top honor in this year’s Canstructure Contest.
The Canstructure Contest is an annual event put on by the Youth Volunteer Corps of Reading that challenges teams of students from across Berks County to hold canned food drives and then build structures out of the cans.
After the contest is judged, the food is donated to the Helping Harvest Fresh Food Bank in Spring Township.
This year, the fifth that the contest was held, move than 240 students made up 17 teams that entered the contest. The theme for 2022 was “favorite children’s book.”
While Winnie the Pooh took home the gold, the runner-up project was built by the team from the Wilson School District. Their project depicted “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”
Videos of the teams’ creations can be viewed at www.yvc-canstructure.org.
In addition to food drives, teams and corporate sponsors also held drives to collect children’s books.
Hundreds of new books will be donated to Helping Harvest to support its weekender backpack program, which provides a bag of food for children to take home from school on Fridays so that they have enough to eat over the weekend.
Many of the students who took part in this year’s Canstructure, along with their family members, will get to see the results of their food drives this weekend. They will volunteer at Helping Harvest on Saturday, the day that the canned food donations are being delivered to the food bank.