(Photo Credit: Facebook / Salvation Army Grande Prairie Community and Family Services)

By Shane Clausing

Community

Rotary Club of Grande Prairie asking for help with annual food drive

Sep 17, 2020 | 12:14 PM

The Rotary Club of Grande Prairie’s annual Food Drive is well short of its $250,000 goal and it is asking for the public’s help to achieve that goal.

The food drive is done in partnership with the Salvation Army of Grande Prairie. It has been moved online this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lori Pollock, the co-chair for the Rotary Community Food Bank Drive, says they could use all the help they can get.

“We are reaching out to the public and hoping they can support us. We recognize that there are a lot of challenges this year and we are just looking for support if people can offer it.”

In years past, the food drive had been a door to door campaign that would last over several days. Volunteers would go around their community and ask for food donations from residents.

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With this year’s food drive moving online, Pollock says they’ve had a tougher time getting the word out.

“What we need is for people to go to our website gpfooddrive.ca, and they’ll see we’ve set-up online shopping there and there’s a hamper, or you could do a straight cash donation if you wanted. We are really hoping for members of the public to like, share our Facebook pages, to call a friend, to let people know the food drive is going on and if they can, donate.”

To date, the Rotary Club has raised just under $47,000 in monetary donations for supplies.

The Club says that last year, 1,000 volunteers went door to door throughout the Peace Region to ask for food donations. They were able to gather 47 tons of food. That helped stock the shelves at the Salvation Army and helped provide over 30,000 meals and 4,000 different hampers.

According to Pollock, the donations that are received now will help the Rotary Club get ready for the holiday season, which is expected to be a busy one.

“What the Salvation Army does is they use all of this food or in this case monetary help, to put together baskets and Christmas hampers and to try and meet the need in the public.”

“Our drive is always to try and fill the shelves. The shelves are getting really close to empty at the Salvation Army and they need those (donations) not only to meet the demand, which is 15-25 hampers a day but also to have enough to supply Christmas hampers.”

The food drive runs until the end of September.