Annual food drive fills shelves at local food banks
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- Published on Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Photo by Kira Paterson. FCC’s Neepawa office is accepting donations.
By Kira Paterson
The Neepawa Press
The Farm Credit Canada (FCC) Drive Away Hunger food drive is underway. Towns across Canada are participating in this event for their local food banks.
It has been running since May 4 and will end Oct. 23.
Last year, 2,400 pounds of food were collected in the Neepawa area. The goal for this year is to collect 3 million pounds across the country.
Neepawa’s food bank is located at the Salvation Army and will be receiving the food donations made in the town. “This really helps us to no end,” says Amanda Naughton-Gale, the manager of the Neepawa Salvation Army. “Most of that food is utilized for our Christmas hamper program and sustains us really for almost an entire year for most of our canned goods and things like that.”
There is a list of needed food items on the posters put up in several businesses around town. “Here specifically, we really get overloaded sometimes with the Kraft Dinners and soup,” Amanda says. Those things are appreciated, but they do need other foods as well. “Things like school snacks, when it’s school time. Snacks are always a really expensive part of grocery buying, so peanut free stuff would be fantastic because a lot of the schools don’t allow peanuts,” she says. Other foods like rice, coffee, peanut butter, juice and cereal are in demand at the food bank.
Monetary donations are also appreciated. Cash donations can be dropped off at the Neepawa FCC office located at 45 Main Street East, or you can go to the FCC website to donate online. The money can go to the Neepawa, Minnedosa or Carberry food banks at the discretion of the contributor and the individual food banks will issue a receipt for the donation.
Local drop-off sites include the Neepawa Banner, Neepawa Dairy Queen, the Neepawa FCC office, Budz N’ Bloom Daycare, Neepawa Golf Course, Mazergroup Neepawa, Richardson Pioneer in Minnedosa, BDO Accountants of Erickson and the local schools in the Rolling River and Beautiful Plains school divisions.
“The help from FCC every year is really one of the major food drives for us and really does stock our shelves,” says Amanda. “We appreciate everybody’s participation in it; without them we would be in dire straits.”
