The shelves of the Salvation Army Food Bank in Swift Current received a major boost during a city wide Halloween Food Drive.
Swift Current youth went door-to-door during a three-hour evening blitz on October 31, with an overwhelming community contribution to this now annual effort.
As of mid Friday afternoon, the Food Bank reported a total of 8,200 pounds of food had been collected over the past few days. The youth effort on Halloween generated approximately 7,500 pounds of food, and food items still continue to come through their doors.
Lorraine Jansen-Unrau, Community and Family Services Co-ordinator at the Salvation Army, admitted they have been overwhelmed by the generosity of this year's drive. The food items will be used for both immediate food hamper needs, plus it has given them a head start on meeting their Christmas hamper needed.
"Our shelves are getting full," she admitted. "We're sort of trying to package stuff up that we put into the food hampers for Christmas. So we're putting a lot of it into boxes and then stacking boxes, because we know that's the stuff that we're going to use for Christmas. The stuff on the shelves is more or less our usual food hamper type items."
After the youth collected the food across the community, they needed a 75 minute unloading effort from the trailers used to collect the food and transferring it right into the Food Bank.
Jansen-Unrau pointed out that after a morning of sorting and packaging on Thursday, they left for lunch and when they returned found that a new large delivery had been made. Swift Current Comprehensive High School students and staff contributed another 650 pounds of food after collecting 1,525 food items and other donations which were delivered over the noon hour on Nov. 1.
There have been other food donations brought into the Food Bank, as not every household was reached on Wednesday night.
