The annual fall Helping Hands Cochrane-Wide Food Drive will be taking place Saturday, Oct. 18.
The event is coordinated by Helping Hands, the Cochrane Activettes and Cochrane Family and Community Support Services (FCSS).
“This town just keeps giving,” said Myrna Christensen, who is part of the Activettes and is helping with the food drive. “It’s a small community and people really band together.”
The day of the event, Cochrane residents can leave their donations of unexpired, non-perishable food items in a bag on their doorstep before 10 a.m.
Christensen said that Helping Hands organizes volunteers to collect these bags and they then bring them back to an organizing centre, which this year is located at Bow Valley Baptist Church, where teams of volunteers, including the Activettes, FCSS and members from Helping Hands, sort the food. The Activettes take all of that food to their food bank and re-sort it into food hampers.
“Our shelves are almost empty. They really are,” said Christensen of the Activettes Food Bank.
She explained that with food prices going up and a lot of people moving to Cochrane because of the high housing prices in Calgary, the need in Cochrane has really gone up. Christensen estimated that it had risen in the last year from 10 hampers a week to 15 and sometimes 20.
Candy Weisner is an FCSS programmer and said that there is a real sense of excitement at the sorting sites, where they have around 400 volunteers twice a year.
She said that Terrance Haxton, who is the coordinator of the bi-annual food drive and facilitator for Helping Hands, has hoped each year to have every household put at least one item on their step.
“Many people are very generous, which is so heartwarming and exciting for the volunteer at that door, but he is still hoping that more and more households take part in this amazing community effort,” said Weisner.
If people are unable to donate on that day, they can also leave a donation at the bins located in Safeway, Save-On-Foods or Mark’s No Frills.
To volunteer, or for more information about the food drive, call FCSS at 403-851-2250.
