Fall Food Drive results in over 10,000 pounds of food for SEHH

The Fall Food Drive has wrapped up and the Southeast stepped up this week to fill the shelves of the food bank at Southeast Helping Hands. 

During the event, we saw an example of how non-profit organizations support each other. 

Joanne Dalton with Steinbach Family Resource Centre stopped by the collection site on Friday with a large donation. 

“We’re really, really lucky,” she says. “Sometimes, we get an abundance of items donated to us. And once we have met the immediate need for our center and the immediate need for families that we serve in pre/post-natal and early childhood, we know there's more need out there. So, if we can share that with other organizations, we know that there's a bit of a greater reach there through places like Southeast Helping Hands and all the other organizations that are serving (the community).” 

On Friday, Dalton delivered a large donation of paper towels and toilet paper, adding to the truckload of items for the food bank. 

“We know that household materials and stuff can be one of those things that just don’t make it into the budget or just don’t get picked up, but they’re still very much needed by families,” she says. 

So, she picked out the excess supplies from their stash and dropped it off for the food bank to distribute to people who need it.

This is what the collection pile looked like at the end of donations on Friday, October 7th.

The Fall Food Drive saw many people, of all ages and from various communities, come together and make this a very successful event. 

Hank Klassen with Southeast Helping Hands is impressed with the effort by local youth groups who went door-to-door earlier in the week to pick up donations from the doorsteps of homes. 

“It’s been unreal,” says Klassen. “The church youth have such a fantastic job and I give great thanks to the leader that set it all up.” 

He reports a total of more than 10,000 pounds of food that came in during the first part of the food drive.