With Thanksgiving just around the corner, so too is the 14th annual BC Thanksgiving Food Drive.
It brings non-perishable food items to go to various food banks throughout the Cowichan Valley from the comfort of your doorstep.
Volunteers will spend next week – September 11-17 – dropping off paper bags to the front doors of subdivisions across Duncan, Cowichan Bay, and Mill Bay. If you’d like to participate, you can put any donations into the bag, and leave it on your porch for pickup by 10am on September 17th.
The initiative has collected around 13,000 pounds of food from 6,000 homes in past years in the Cowichan Valley alone. Across BC, 5,000 volunteers collect from 250,000 homes in 86 communities.
They are collecting things like canned goods, dried food goods, and cereals – really any sort of non-perishable goods.
“The pandemic and economical hardships have created a much greater demand for the services of our local food banks here in the Cowichan Valley,” Fred McCullough of the Cowichan Valley BC Food Drive Committee says in a release. ”
The committee says that over half of households that rely on food banks are families with children, and half of those are headed by single parents. In total, 40 per cent of people who use foodbanks are under the age of 18.
Proceeds from this year’s food drive will go to local food banks like the Duncan Food Basket Society, the Mill Bay Food Bank, Lake Cowichan Food bank, and Chemainus food bank.
