Donations to the 2017 Thanksgiving Food Drive in Langley and Cloverdale were “off the charts,” community coordinator Scott Friesen said.
The annual Saturday campaign to collect food from local residents raised three times as much as last year, 32,000 pounds of non-perishable food, Friesen said.
“That is triple what we did last year,” Friesen told The Times.
“We’re very grateful.”
Friesen credited the involvement of new community partners, both business and charitable, that allowed organizers to reach 20,000 homes in both communities.
“This year, we were very pro-active in getting more community sponsors involved. We have a number of corporate organizations but also a (number of) non-profit and service-based organizations involved. They have taken on a lot of additional routes this year.”
During the week leading up to collection day, volunteers delivered flyers and donation bags to homes in the Langley and Cloverdale areas.
Residents were asked to place non-perishable food items in the bag and leave it on their doorstep before 9:30 a.m. on the day.
The result was long lineups of filled-to-the-gunnels collection vehicles and big piles of food being sorted into boxes at the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Langley, one of the partner groups, which provided sorting space in its temple parking lot and other assistance.
A pleased Friesen was directing traffic.
“This is looking like it is going to be off the charts, at least for the Langley and Cloverdale areas,” Friesen said.
“So we’re looking like this should be a record-setting day.”
The BC Thanksgiving Food Drive started in the city of Burnaby in 2009 to assist the local food bank.
Since then, it has expanded across the province wide, assisting dozens of community food banks in more than 50 cities .
The BCTFD website describes it as a ”non-denominational project … open to all interested individuals, community groups, religious organizations (and) businesses.
Last year, over 475,000 lbs of food was collected by more than 5,000 volunteers worth $1,1 million.
For more information contact info@bctfooddrive.org.
dan.ferguson@langleytimes.com
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