Hundreds upon hundreds of volunteers turned out on Halloween for the 19th annual Better Together Food Drive, organized by the Hillcrest Church to benefit the Moose Jaw & District Food Bank (MJFB).
UPDATED: The 2024 Better Together Food Drive collected 52,776 lbs. of food, and the MJFB reports donations are still coming in.
Daycee Richardson, one of the organizers with Hillcrest Church, said it was probably a record number of people of all ages working together for the MJFB.
“We’ve done this for 19 years now, we hit every home in Moose Jaw in one evening to collect food,” Richardson said. “I think tonight we had a record number of volunteers on the list. We had 455 when we started the evening, but I actually think the number was higher than that because we always get some walk-ins.
“So, that was people on the streets, collecting door-to-door, plus we would have several dozen more just at the sorting centre. We had 90 grade 9 students from Vanier come this morning to help set up the fairgrounds, so really today we’ve had close to 600 people involved, which is amazing.”
There are 42 routes to cover in the city, and about eight people to a route. Last year’s food drive collected 44,216 lbs of food — Richardson said they typically collect between 40,000 and 50,000 lbs each year and this one should be no different.
“We have no way of knowing throughout the evening. We won’t have that number until later in the day tomorrow. But I can tell you just even from the couple of routes that I was out on, people were giving really generously.”
Jacob Dale was out early in the evening driving a route in the Palliser Heights area with his team (including his dog Leo). He said it was a great experience.
“It was a little cold to start, but it seems like we’re heating up. Pretty much every house has had stuff to give. It’s just a lot of fun, it’s nice to get out here with some teammates and try and help out the community. I’ve seen some great costumes, I just saw Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc. It’s been good.”
A team of eight from Hillcrest Church working in Sunningdale had filled an entire truck bed by about 7:30. Volker Rininsland said the community has been wonderful.
“People are so generous and so good. This is the 19th year we’ve done it, so people know we’re coming, now. About 90 per cent of houses have something for us, so it’s really nice.
“Hopefully we’ll get that truck riding the springs and then we’ll go to the exhibition grounds and there’ll be a big lineup there to unload. Some of us might go help sort, and I guess us older guys might go home to sleep,” Rininsland laughed.
Over its lifetime, the Better Together Food Drive has collected just under 800,000 lbs for the food bank. In the two years they couldn’t go door-to-door, they donated just over $100,000.
Richardson noted that a big part of the gift they give to the food bank is the sorting process before drop-off. If the 10s of thousands of pounds of food was dropped at the MJFB in bulk, it would take a huge amount of time for the limited staff and volunteers to go through it all. This way, the food is ready for clients almost immediately.
“This is a huge impact, with our client numbers going up so much over the last four or five years,” said Terri Smith, operations manager at the MJFB. “Our shelves are almost empty constantly, you know? This is absolutely wonderful to see all these people, I think this is a record number of volunteers this year.
“We definitely made room for (all the donations). We have lots of empty space, so it’s not going to take long. I would like to thank all of the volunteers, and the community, the organizations, all the people that came to help. This means a lot, not only to the food bank, but to the community who are really struggling right now.”