November 2011

Students bolster food bank shelves

By: Jerome Lessard

Instead of taking this Halloween, Indigo Christ and her friends wanted to give.

While most children strolled the streets with their parents and friends to gather candy Monday evening, the Grade 12 student at Moira Secondary School and her group of community-oriented students stepped up to help end hunger in Belleville by holding the school’s first Halloween for Hunger, Trick-or-Eat in support to the Gleaners Food Bank.

Between 4:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., Christ and a dozen of Moira students collected enough non-perishable food items to fill 12 shopping carts. Tuesday morning, the group was pleased and proud of their initiative’s turnout as volunteers from the Gleaners were sorting out a total of 701 kg in food donations.

“We thought that asking people who live in Moira’s neighbourhood to get non-perishable food items ready for pick up on Halloween night could be a good and different way to support our local food bank,” said Christ. “We handed out flyers in mail boxes in the Stanley Park division, on Farley Avenue, and north of Moira last week in the days leading to Halloween and we ended up collecting much more food than we expected.”

The student said one in six Canadian families’ income cannot cover their basic food necessities. Last Friday, Christ and her Halloween for Hunger team met with other students who were willing to collect food for those in need instead of gathering sweets.

“More than 25 percent of those who seek help from food banks are children and youth like us,” said Christ. “It made me think and that’s how we thought we could also use Halloween to support our food bank.”.

Christ and her friends were inspired by their fellow students at Bayside Secondary School (BSS) in Quinte West, who held their third annual Halloween for Hunger Monday evening.

Fifty students from BSS’s leadership class went door-to-door to homes in Bayside, Belleville, Frankford, Stirling and Trenton to collect about 2,500 non-perishable food items (314 Kilograms), which were donated to Gleaners Food Bank, Trenton Care & Share Food Bank, and the Stirling Community Cupboard.

“Helping others is never out of style at Bayside,” said Emily Young, teacher at Bayside Secondary School. “This is our third Halloween for Hunger campaign and each year it seems to run a little more smoothly. It’s an amazing feeling to be able to show students the value of supporting the local community. It helps them to understand the issues facing many families.”

Adrianna Mackay and Kelsie Sills, student organizers of the annual Halloween food drive at Bayside are proud to have set a precedent for fighting against hunger in the Quinte area. Young said that in 2010, Bayside became the first high school in Canada to organize Meal Exchange’s 24-Hours for Hunger campaign — then raising $10,000 for local food banks and the school’s Food for Learning Program.

“It’s cool that we are able to show people in our community that teens are aware of the issue of hunger and that we want to do something to help out”, said Mackay.

An annual survey released by Food Banks Canada this week shows the number of Canadians using food banks has declined slightly, but persistent demand indicates many are struggling in a frail economic recovery.

According to the association’s survey, more than 851,000 individuals visited a food bank in March alone — a number that’s little changed from last year’s record and still 26 per cent above pre-recession levels.

“I think we’re coming out of a recession, but those numbers are telling us that many Canadians, and people here in Quinte, are still really struggling,” said Susanne Quinlan, director of operations at Gleaners.

Quinlan added that food donations made through Halloween for Hunger initiatives are more than welcome and help her and team of volunteers filling the shelves of the food banks’ warehouse in the months leading to the Christmas holidays.

“It was great to see all the food items that the students from Moira and Bayside collected in just one evening Monday,” said Quinlan. “We were down by four tonnes after our last food drive in October, so these Halloween donations are greatly appreciated and help us getting our inventory back to normal.”

-With files from QMI Agency

jlessard@intelligencer.ca